


Far-fetched

by Aeolist



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: An OTP you didn’t know you needed, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Getting to Know Each Other, Post-Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:34:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 60,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22106392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeolist/pseuds/Aeolist
Summary: “What made you like this?” Steve asks. “You’re strong.”Was there another experiment going on? Like Project Rebirth?“Oh, I dunno, you know how it is,” she says. “Latchkey kids, children of divorce, growing up ‘chosen,’ -- it’s complicated.”Steve and Buffy are tracking the same dangerous artifact when their paths cross.(Takes place between the The Winter Soldier & Age of Ultron /Post-BtVS [not comic compliant].)
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Buffy Summers
Comments: 206
Kudos: 282





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve POV.

Every avenue leading towards Bucky is a dead end. Steve spends months with Sam, tracking each trail they come across, following leads, listening to whispers, but it always stops, just before they reach him.

“Don’t think he wants to be found, man,” Sam tells him one night over the clinking of beer bottles against a well-worn bartop. 

That night they’re in Brașov. A week later, Chisinau. Places Steve doesn’t speak the language. Places he never got to see the last time he made his way around Europe, with the Howling Commandos.

Eventually, Sam gets an invitation back to Washington. The army is picking up the remains of what SHIELD (no, _HYDRA_ ) left behind. Not all of them were bad. Not all of them knew. 

Sam can help. 

“I don’t have to go,” he says to Steve. That night they’re in Warsaw.

Steve’s been there before, but it’s changed. Even the “Old Town” wasn’t built, or rebuilt, until after he went under the ice. And the rest of the city is a mishmash of restorations and Communist architecture. There is very little left of the city he’d seen during wartime, but then that was the point, wasn’t it? It had burned down. 

They’re in a run-down hotel room, Sam sitting on the bed nearest the door, contemplating whether to pack up his wings and his clothes.

“You should go.” Steve says. “We both could use the break.”

“You could come.”

Steve doesn’t respond. 

“You could help.”

“I think my army days are over.”

“Then what? You gonna take a break? A real one?”

“Sure. You could call it that.”

Sam’s look is skeptical. But he gets up and moves towards the wardrobe, grabbing for his backpack and his two sets of clothes.

By the next night, Steve is alone in the shabby hotel room.

It suits him. 

\--

He _does_ decide to take a break.

Kind of.

A break for Steve is hunting HYDRA. 

It’s a break from the Winter Soldier and who he used to be, from SHIELD, from the Avengers and New York City and getting recognized on the street.

It’s a break from thinking so damn much, because to him, hunting HYDRA is more of a _do_ activity.

The fall of SHIELD has caused an influx of weapons, tech, and mystical objects that’s spread out across North America and Europe.

They, unlike Bucky, are easy to track. Even easier, with friends who have spent a lifetime in covert ops. It’s a quick call to Natasha, to ask what the highest priority is. A mission by himself is a field trip. A getaway. She gets it.

“London,” she says. Her voice is low. He doesn’t ask where she is, and she doesn’t offer it. “A gem, housed in a necklace. Tarak-ha’s Amulet. It went missing the night SHIELD went down. They might look to sell it on the black market, or they might wear it themselves.”

“What does it do?”

“Allegedly? Opens a portal to another world.”

“I’m guessing it’s not a friendly world?”

“I’m thinking we don’t want to find out.”

The line disconnects. 

\--

So he winds up in London. Makes a list of the seedier pubs and shops, places their old intelligence (the reliable remnants of it) told them HYDRA frequented. He gets through the first three on his list, spends a few hours in each listening, waiting to hear something that will be useful. 

It’s at the fourth pub that Steve overhears something he can use. 

Two men, drinking thick, dark porters, keeping their voices low enough that he wouldn’t be able to hear them if not for the serum. They’re a table over from him, and everything about their posture and tone is furtive.

“She’s the Slayer,” one says. “The real one. The original.”

The man tilts his head towards the bar, an indication. 

Steve allows his eyes to follow. He’s not sure what he’s looking for. The bar is empty, save for two or three men (also drinking dark beer) and a blonde woman, standing at the bar. She’s talking to the bartender, but the bartender is avoiding her eyes. 

Steve hears her say “amulet.”

He looks more closely.

From where he’s sitting, against the far wall, he can turn his body and look right at the bar. He’s got his baseball cap on, pulled low, and no one pays him any mind. They _are_ noticing the blonde woman. The other patrons at the bar are angling their bodies away from her. The bartender still won’t meet her eyes. Conversation drums on at the tables around him, but it’s tense.

She smiles, a pretty expression, he can tell, even from where he looks on, over to the side -- but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

Then, she grabs the bartender by his collar, hits his head against the bar, and jerks him back up. 

His face looks deformed, now, in the low light. What did she _do_ ? If she can do that _without_ the amulet...

The bartender sputters, something about an abandoned row house, Steve can’t make out the address, but she can, and the woman lets him go. 

“Was that so hard?” he hears her ask. 

No one else looks up. Like they want to make sure she doesn’t notice them. Like they can’t get back to what they were doing until she’s gone. 

She walks out of the pub.

Steve follows.

\--

The clouds are low, trapping the moonlight, and keeping the dark streets sharp, at least to his eyes. 

He hangs back by a block or so. She’s wearing low slung jeans and a red leather jacket that hits down past her knees. Even without the serum, he thinks he’d be able to keep eyes on her from a distance, with the red of her coat and the bright blonde of her hair. 

There are enough people out, at first, to keep him obscured. As she gets into a seedier part of town, the crowds disburse, and he finds himself having to keep farther back to avoid being seen.

He’s not covert ops. Tony, especially, likes to make fun of how he sticks out -- six-foot-two, two hundred and forty pounds -- (“You look like Brad Pitt trying to avoid the paparazzi, it’s ridiculous, no one could possibly fail to notice you,” Tony says, once, before a mission, and knocks the baseball cap off of Steve’s head.) -- but he can see and hear from a distance, and distance is his friend when he’s trailing a lead.

She ducks into a row house, and he follows. He pauses at the entrance, looking for some gap in the boarded up windows for him to peer into. He doesn’t find one, so he waits a moment, giving her time to get further inside, and then he pushes the door gently open.

It’s dark. Musty. Enough to remind him of the days when any bit of mold or dust would trigger his asthma.

He can hear her, follows her voice. He pauses outside of the room she must be in, standing with his side up against the wall, hidden, but ready to peek into the open doorway.

“This isn’t really up for negotiation,” she says. “You can either give me the amulet, or you can get slain and _then_ give me the amulet.”

“You’ll have the amulet,” a voice responds, rasping, “when Tarak-ha the Destroyer uses it to slice open this reality. He’s ready. He will use his vessel and beckon his brethren home, and they will feast on your flesh, they’ll tear open your eye sockets and suck the juices from your brain, they’ll--” 

“Yeah. I get it. You hear one ‘slice open reality’ monologue and you’ve heard them all. I’m going to ask you this one more time: do you have the amulet, or does this destroyer guy have it? Cause I’ve got places to be.”

Instead of an answer, Steve hears a roar, followed by the grunting, smashing sounds of a fight breaking out. The drywall next to his head thumps, raining some dust onto his hat and shoulders.

He’s moving into the room before he can stop himself -- he’s not sure whether the woman is HYDRA, or something else, the way she scared all of the patrons in that bar. But, obviously, the man talking about tearing open eye sockets can’t be a good guy, and it’s his job to stop the bad guys and get the amulet, so -- 

Steve rounds the corner to find the woman pulling an _axe_ out of the inside of her coat, and moving it forward in one sure motion towards her attacker, slicing off his head. 

The body drops. Steve looks at the head, on the ground. Is it--

Alien? 

It almost looks Chitauri. 

She rounds on him, axe still in her hand, but her eyes dart between her weapon and his face, and she asks, “Who are you?”

He doesn’t want to give her a moment to move with that axe in her hand, so he steps forward before she can react, grabbing at her wrist, and pivoting their arms down so he can disarm her.

She’s strong. He can’t quite get it away from her.

She looks at him again, her brow furrowed, and then down to where he’s holding her wrist. She tries to break free from his grasp. He doesn’t let her, so after a moment of struggle, she takes advantage of it, spinning until she gets him behind her, his front to her back, and she pulls, hard, flipping him over her shoulder.

He lands on his back, harder than he expects. The breath is almost knocked out of him. It’s a move he’s tried with Natasha, but they do it during sparring, in the training room, when there are mats on the floor. 

He’s still holding onto her, uses the leverage to pull himself up to his knees, manages to slip his grip from her wrist to the handle of the axe, and wrenches it from her hand. Her eyes widen, but Steve flings it away before she can grab it again. A little too much strength behind his throw, the axe is launched into the wall, stuck there by the blade.

“Who are _you_?” he asks.

His grip on her wrist falters, and she elbows him in the face. There’s so much more force behind it than he expects. It’s more like being hit by Bucky than Natasha. She darts away from him, moving several steps back. 

Up close, she’s tiny. She’s wrapped up in her big, red leather jacket, and under it is a wooly looking beige sweater. All of it threatens to swallow her up. She can’t be more than five foot two or three. Woman or not, she’s closer in size to him before Project Rebirth, not after.

How is she so _strong_? Maybe almost as strong as him, though they’d have to go all out for him to tell. Who did that to her -- who’s experimenting on women -- HYDRA, or --

She rubs at her wrist, looking him up and down. “You’ve been following me.” 

“Are you HYDRA?” 

“I’m Buffy,” she says. “Who’s Hydra?”

“What’s Buffy?”

“Let’s skip the Abbott and Costello. _I’m_ Buffy. My name is Buffy. Who’s Hydra?”

“The bad guys,” Steve says. 

“Yeah, well. Not it.” She shrugs. He stops, looks at her again. She doesn’t _feel_ dangerous.

“You’re American,” he says. He hasn’t heard an American accent in the days since Sam left.

“You too.” She pauses. “Why were you following me?”

“I’m looking for that amulet too.” 

“Why? Who are you working for?” She eyes him again, and he feels a little too seen. “The army? The Initiative?”

“No. I’m working alone.”

“Then how do you know about it in the first place?” she asks.

”I’ve got sources. Look. I’m just trying to make sure it stays out of the wrong hands.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got it under control,” she says. “This is pretty much my run-of-the-mill Tuesday.”

She takes a step towards the wall where the axe is stuck, and he moves into her way. 

“I wouldn’t do that,” he says. 

“I wouldn’t do _that_ ,” she responds with an eye roll, and moves as though to step around him. He puts himself in her way again. 

“Look,” she says, “I don’t know if you heard, but Chaka Khan is about to destroy the world, so unless you want your brain juices in some demon’s mai tai, I’m gonna need you to get out of my way.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” Steve asks. 

“I’m _so_ not interested in having my credentials questioned.”

They pause for a beat.

“Okay, listen,” she moves to get around him again, and this time she anticipates his counter, ducking around his other side with a burst of speed. She grabs the axe, leaving a poof of drywall dust in her wake, and slips past him. “You seem nice, kind of, but I really do need to go stop the apocalypse.”

Stop the apocalypse? 

He moves into step beside her. “The people in that bar were afraid of you. That man’s face, after you…” He’d never seen anything like it. “How can I trust you’re not going to use the amulet for yourself?”

She stops, raising an eyebrow. 

“The _people_ in that bar were _vampires_. They’re supposed to be afraid of me.”

“Vampires? Like, Dracula, vampires?”

Steve had seen _Son of Dracula_ in 1943 after he got Bucky back. They laughed together at the parts that scared everyone else, tossing kernels of popcorn up into the air and catching them in their mouths.

Vampires. It seemed far-fetched, but then, it wasn’t any more so than aliens and gods and men in metal suits. Everything had been that way since he’d awoken from the ice. 

“Yes. Like Dracula.” She sounds like he’s hit a sore spot. “Why is that so hard to believe? Everyone’s all good with aliens now, but still shocked about vamps. Trust me, they’ve been hanging around way longer.” 

They’re out of the house, now, heading back down the street. 

“They called you ‘the slayer.’”

“Yuh huh,” she says, looking ahead. 

“Why?” 

“Because I _am_ the slayer,” she says, slowly.

“The original one.”

“Is that what they said?”

“What made you like this?” Steve asks. “You’re strong.”

Was there another experiment going on? Like Project Rebirth?

“Oh, I dunno, you know how it is -- latchkey kids, children of divorce, growing up ‘chosen,’ -- it’s complicated.” 

“Wait.” He stops, intending to grab her shoulders and stop her as well. He tries, and she pulls herself lithely out of his grip and stops on her own.

“No touchie,” she says, holding up a hand. “You don’t seem like you’re getting this. I’m Buffy, I’m a vampire slayer, which means it’s my job to stop vampires and demons, like the ones you just saw. I’m the ‘original one,’ because there are a lot of vampire slayers now. It’s a long story. I’m going to find the amulet and make sure reality doesn’t get ripped open. And who did you say you are?”

“Steve Rogers,” he says. He could give her a fake name, but he’s not undercover, not even on a mission, really, so why not. This is interesting, at least. He waits to see if there’s a spark of recognition. 

There isn’t. 

“Listen, Steve? I appreciate the concern, but I know what I’m doing. I’ve been doing this a long time, probably longer than you’ve been enlisted, even--”

“Somehow I doubt that,” he says, more to himself. 

“--And I’m _really_ not needing any help, here,” she continues. “So, pat yourself on the back, and go tell your so-not-the-Initiative-2.0 buddies that the slayer is handling the amulet. They’ll know who I am.”

“I told you, I’m working alone,” Steve says.

“Right, well. Ditto. It’s under control. Thanks for stopping by.”

“I’ll help you,” he says. “I’m good to have around in a fight.” 

She seems to consider this. “And when we find the amulet? What would you want to do with it?” 

“Destroy it,” he says.

She nods, maybe more to herself than to him. 

“All right,” she says, falling back into step. “For the record: if you’re evil, this is going to end badly for you.”

“Likewise,” Steve responds, picking up his pace alongside her. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve POV.

  
She’s walking, pace fast for someone so short, but he keeps up easily. They’re moving in the direction of the pub, steady and silent. It’s still before midnight, and he slept the day before, so he’s nowhere near tired, particularly not after meeting Buffy, and hearing of superstitions come to life.  
  
As he walks, he finds himself glancing at her every so often despite his efforts not to. When he first saw her -- the tension in the room, the way she easily grabbed the bartender by the collar -- he thought that was a sign she was HYDRA, but now he sees it for what it is. She’s someone who can walk into a room full of monsters and scare _them_.   
  
He sees why, too, now that he’s looking. Apart from the fact that she’s strong. That assuredness, that effortlessness. It’s something he knows he’s got on the battlefield, even if he’s felt lost half the time since he woke up. It’s something Tony has, in or out of the suit, and Natasha and Thor, too, which is why they all work so well together in the field. It’s confidence, matched with ability.  
  
“How will you find him?” Steve asks, breaking through the silence. “Tarak-ha.”  
  
She doesn’t answer him. After a moment, she asks instead, “You _are_ military, right?”  
  
“Former,” he admits.  
  
“I knew it.” She sounds pleased with herself.  
  
“What gave me away? I know it’s not my haircut. And I’ve got the beard now.” It's new, and he's not sure he'll keep it. He runs a hand across it, to be sure.   
  
“Your posture,” she says. “Only army guys stand like that.”   
  
He adjusts his shoulders as he walks, suddenly aware of them.   
  
“You’ve got the super strength going, so obviously someone was offering up the juice during basic.”  
  
“Juice?” He doesn’t know what she means. They mostly had water and milk to drink during training in the forties.  
  
“Either that, or you’re not human.”  
  
“I’m human,” he says.  
  
“Okay, so you’re human, but you’re strong. Stronger than me, maybe,” she says, sounding thoughtful. “Are there more like you? Are you part of a -- I don’t know -- a unit, or something?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“I knew some guys a long time ago, and the army was giving them meds to make them strong. It worked, but they were nowhere near as strong as you.”  
  
“There’s no unit. It’s just me who’s like this.” He’s not sure how hard he can press, whether she trusts him yet, but he asks anyway. “You said there are more like you?”  
  
Her eyes dart to his face -- she does look a bit dubious. “Yes.”  
  
“How did you get so strong?” If there were someone out there who had recreated the serum, it wouldn’t be long until they were abusing it, if they weren’t already.   
  
“We’re born like this,” Buffy says. “No meds.”   
  
“And you’re the original one? What does that mean?”   
  
She looks like she’s not sure if she wants to say more, but she speaks, maybe despite herself. “Used to be, there was only one slayer. ‘One girl in all the world with the strength and skill to fight the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness.’” She speaks like she’s reciting something long-memorized. “Not a great life expectancy in that gig. And when that ‘one girl’ died, the next one was called, her powers activated. On and on.”  
  
He waits for her to continue.   
  
“That one girl used to be me. But, we changed it. Now, all of the women who can have the power, do have it. There are a few hundred of us. They don’t have to use their power, and they don’t have to join us, but we’re here if they need us. And, among other things, we make sure demons like Tarak-ha don’t rip open reality.”  
  
“How did you change it? Make it so there’s more than one.”  
  
She shrugs. “Magic.”   
  
“Right,” he says.  
  
“And you’re not with the army anymore,” she says, like it isn’t a question.   
  
“Not for a long time.”  
  
“Why not?” she asks.  
  
“It’s a long story.”  
  
“I showed you mine,” she says, tone entreating. “Besides, it’s a long walk. We’ve got time.”   
  
He’s not ready to get into it. “I’ll just say, I was ready to take my own orders.”  
  
He can see her nod out of the corner of his eye.   
  
“I get that,” she says sounding sympathetic.   
  
A beat, and then her tone changes.  
  
“What I _don’t_ get is why you’re _here_. You’re the one-and-only extra-powered army guy who’s ready to take his own orders, and for some reason you’re tracking down this amulet? Which you didn’t even know belonged to a demon?”  
  
“I knew it was dangerous. Knew it needed to be found and destroyed. That was good enough for me to get involved.”  
  
“Is that right?” she asks.   
  
“You can trust me, Buffy,” he says, answering the question underneath her question.  
  
He could’ve said, ‘you can trust me, I’m Captain America,’ but he doesn’t want to. For one thing, it sounds foolish. And another, there’s something appealing about _not_ being recognized, about stepping into someone else’s world, even if only for a little while.  
  
“I’ve already told you more than I should, if I couldn’t.” She’s silent for a long moment, then finally says, “I’m thinking, if all the demon needed was his amulet, we’d be seeing some carnage by now.”   
  
“Makes sense.” She’s right. It’s a good deduction, and he can feel himself slipping into talking strategy. “Is there something else he might need? Another rare item?”  
  
“Could be. That, or he has to wait for a specific day, maybe a particular moon phase, or someone specific to participate, or -- oh! -- both! Like, a ritual sacrifice, maybe.” She stops, then cringes. “I promise I’m not as excited about the idea of ritual sacrifice as I just sounded.”  
  
“That’s a relief,” he says dryly.  
  
“Either way, we need to figure out what else he needs to get the party started and then we can crash it. Well, crash before… the party. Crash the party prep.”  
  
“Crash the party prep,” he repeats.  
  
“Y’know. Stop him _before_ he starts ending the world.”  
  
“I agree that would be the ideal time to stop him,” he says, voice wry.   
  
“It usually ends better for me that way.”  
  
“Okay. We have a plan, then: crash the party prep,” Steve says. “Where do you suggest we start?”  
  
“Easy. Research mode. I’ve got some people I can call. I’d go straight to headquarters but I’m not bringing you around the girls until I know more about what your deal is.”  
  
Headquarters. The word reminds him of the Triskelion, makes his skin crawl a little. His gut tells him he can trust her, but then he didn’t see it coming with Pierce until it was too late.  
  
“Your friends are still awake?” he asks, wanting to dig a little more.   
  
“Slayers are up all hours. Comes with the territory.”  
  
“Because of the vampires.” In spite of all he’s seen, it just sounds silly when he says it out loud.  
  
“They-who-tend-to-be-nocturnal,” she agrees.  
  
“Then the sunlight part is true? They can’t go out in the day?”  
  
“Not without a heavy blanket, at least,” she says. “They also don’t like stakes through the heart, or being beheaded. Though that would go for most of us, really.”   
  
“What about garlic?” Steve asks, curious now.  
  
She scrunches up her nose. “Doesn't hurt them all that much. They just don’t like the smell.”  
  
“Holy water and Crucifixes?”  
  
“Yes and yes. Moderate hindrances. Usually.”  
  
“Silver?”   
  
“No, that’s werewolves,” Buffy says.   
  
“Werewolves are real too?”   
  
Why had no one at SHIELD mentioned any of this? Nick Fury, all of the other Avengers, they’d seemed like the _alien_ thing was a huge revelation, and yet, all of these superstitions were real too. Did they not _know_ ? Or was she making it up? The… thing she beheaded with the axe certainly didn’t look human. Maybe the slayers had a different belief system, around aliens? Maybe it was all the same thing?  
  
“...Really not their fault, and with time they can learn to control it,” she says, and he’s missed some of what she was saying, lost in thought as he was. She trails off, but he’s reluctant to let silence take over again, now that he’s successfully gotten them talking.  
  
“Not headquarters, you said. Where are we going, then?”  
  
There’s a slight pause, and by the look on her face, he thinks maybe she’s embarrassed.   
  
“My place. I figure, things get rowdy, I can take you.” He tries and fails to interpret that comment innocently. As he told Natasha, he may be ninety-five, but he’s not dead.  
  
She’s looking at him like she’s waiting. “If you’re coming, we’ll need to get onto the Tube.”  
  
They’re a block or so from where they started at the pub.  
  
“Actually? I’ve got some wheels,” he says.   
  
\--  
  
For someone who chopped off a monster’s head right in front of him an hour ago, she’s holding onto him pretty tight. Maybe she’s never been on a motorcycle before.  
  
He weaves through the traffic easily, enjoying the feel of the wind in his hair (he’s put his hat away, now -- he doesn’t want to lose it). It’s a guilty pleasure of his, finding his way to a bike when he’s away from home, and even with the dregs of SHIELD being washed away, there are still resources for agents, if you know where to look.  
  
She’s got his helmet, not that he really needs one in the first place, and maybe she doesn’t either, but she took it when he offered it, and offering it felt like the right thing to do.   
  
Helmet aside, her hands are balled up in his bomber jacket, and she’s clinging to him like she’s now more concerned with the motorcycle being secretly evil than with him. He can feel the handle of the axe poking him in the side, wonders idly if the blade might be somewhere less than safe on her person.  
  
“I was assuming you had four!” she yells in his ear.  
  
“What?” he yells back, over his shoulder.  
  
“Wheels! Four wheels!”  
  
He laughs, letting himself speed up for the fun of it, and to feel her grab on a little tighter. The roads are empty, the clouds low and bright. It’s the most fun he’s had in a while, since he’s not quite sure when.  
  
“Turn right up ahead!”   
  
He does. It’s a few more turns after that, and then he parks, leaving the bike on the curb. She takes the helmet off and hands it to him, shaking out her hair. She doesn’t say whether she’s relieved to be off the bike, but it takes a few steps for her walk to become less rigid.  
  
“It’s up here,” she says, indicating the brick apartment building.   
  
Without another word, she lets them into the front entrance, then up a set of narrow stairs and into a flat. She seems to watch him closely as he follows her into the apartment, and he sees some tension leave her shoulders once she shuts the door behind them.   
  
“Everything okay?” he asks.   
  
“I was just double checking for something,” she says, “but you passed.”   
  
“Passed what?” He’s not quite sure what to expect from her yet, and half of what she says needs a follow-up inquiry.  
  
“I didn’t invite you in.”  
  
“Oh. I’m sorry -- it seemed like I was supposed to come in after you, but I can wait outside if you want, while you make those calls--”  
  
“No,” she says. “It’s a good thing.”   
  
“Now I’m not sure what you mean.”  
  
“It’s nothing,” she says. “Just another vampire thing you need to learn. They need to be invited in; you didn’t.”  
  
She pulls the axe out of her red leather jacket and places it on the two-person dining table. Then she takes the jacket off and lays it across the back of a chair. He’s pleased that she trusts him enough to leave the axe there, even though he feels like he shouldn’t care.  
  
“If it helps,” he says, “There are a lot of things everyone knows that I’m still learning about.”  
  
“I’m not sure it does,” she says, incredulous, with a tilt of her head. She makes her way towards the kitchen.   
  
The flat is small, mostly unadorned, and since the kitchen is a galley, he stands off to the side and waits for her to tell him what comes next. He feels like he takes up too much space in here. It’s the right size for someone like her, but for him -- the chair looks small. Should he sit? What are the chances he’d break it? He didn’t used to have to worry about that kind of thing.  
  
She comes back into the room holding a cell phone, and taps away at a text message as she moves to the loveseat and sits down.   
  
“Steve?” she says, noticing him again. “You can sit. Unlike at that bar, I promise nothing in here bites.”   
  
He frowns, looking between the two tiny wooden chairs at the table, and the absolutely pocket-sized couch she’s sitting on. He sniffs, then pulls out a chair at the table and gingerly lowers himself into it.  
  
“I split my time between here and Rome,” she says, “So it doesn’t make sense to rent a bigger place.”   
  
She must have noticed him looking around like he wasn’t sure where there was space for him to sit. He doesn’t want to come off as rude.   
  
“No, it’s -- very nice --”   
  
“Hello?” She’s picked up a phone call. “Dawnie, good, you’re up. The bar was a bust. No, the guy knew who’d bought it, but that demon was a dead end. Literally, now.”  
  
She’s toed off her boots and Steve can see her sock-clad feet propped up against the coffee table. She wielded the axe like it was slicing butter, threw him over her shoulder like he weighed nothing, but she looks so delicate now, knees up, feet moving a little every so often like she might be restless.  
  
“Do you think you can do a little more digging on the ritual? We’re thinking Tarak-ha might need some other rare items, or maybe a specific day or star sign or something, to get things cookin’.”  
  
There’s a pause while the other person speaks, and Steve can’t quite make their words out.   
  
“We--? Oh, right. I met a guy who’s tracking it too. ... No, he’s a definite white hat. Ex army guy, but _way_ strong. Not that we need the firepower, with the girls on call, but... He wants to help, so I want to see what homework we can give him.”  
  
Another pause.   
  
“Yes, he’s here right now.”  
  
Another.   
  
“Yes.”  
  
And another.   
  
“Steve…” She looks at him. “Rogers, right?”   
  
He nods.   
  
“I don’t know, _is_ that his name?”  
  
She stops moving her feet against the coffee table and Steve feels his breath catch.   
  
“Dawn,” she says, sounding a bit huffish, “you know I don’t pay attention to that stuff--”  
  
She turns to look at him, evaluative. He’s feels strange staring back at her, so he averts his eyes, finds himself looking at the television even though it’s off.  
  
“I guess, yeah, now that you mention it… Yes. Um. I don’t know. Yes? I mean, I can ask.”   
  
He’s feeling like he’s under a microscope, the way she’s still staring, and he can see where this is going. The person on the other end of the line is definitely more familiar with his not-so-secret identity than Buffy is.  
  
“Say, Steve?”  
  
He has to clear his throat, and reluctantly meets her gaze. “Yes?”  
  
“You wouldn’t by any chance happen to be Captain America, would you?”  
  
“Um,” he says. For some reason, his cheeks start to feel warm. Why is he feeling self-conscious?  
  
“Judging by his face, I think that’s a yes,” Buffy says into the phone.   
  
“It’s a yes,” he confirms.  
  
There’s chatter on the other end of the call, while Buffy continues to stare in his direction. She doesn’t look star struck, like some of the people who recognize him on the street (before the hat, and now the beard, anyway). It’s more like, a few things are clicking into place from their earlier conversation.  
  
“Dawnie, I’m gonna let you go, okay? Call me when you find something. I’ll be up for a while, but tomorrow’s fine too. … Yeah. If it were going to happen tonight, we’d be seeing signs. Love you.”   
  
She ends the call, placing the phone down on the coffee table without looking at it.  
  
“Huh,” she says.  
  
Steve swallows.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buffy POV

Okay. Yeah, she sees it now. That was her bad. 

To be fair, he’s usually wearing that hooded mask thing when she’s seen him in pictures online. Plus, she’d never seen him with a beard. Not to mention, the Avengers have always been a little -- showy to her. Not that she wasn’t grateful! She definitely was pro-Earth-not-being-invaded-by-aliens. It’s just that some people save the world from a portal of incoming doom _anonymously_. 

Or maybe she just likes her news to look a little less like her personal life.

Either way, she hasn’t spent a lot of time following the Avengers, other than the immediate aftermath of the Battle of New York, and that was only for two reasons: One, she had slayers on the ground, and two -- like everyone -- she wanted to know how extensive the casualties were. 

She wasn’t as keen on the celebrity culture that popped up after. But she’s at least a little bit familiar with the story of Captain America. Everyone is. 

Now, Steve kind of looks like he wants to sink into the floor. His jaw is clenched, his arms are folded, and he’s looking anywhere but her. It occurs to her that he could have told her. Told her more clearly, anyway. She thinks maybe he didn’t want to. Maybe he wanted to just be _Steve Rogers_ for a little while. 

She takes pity on him, speaks first. “Really, Steve, it’s no big. I don’t need an autograph, and I’m not gonna run away screaming.”

He doesn’t respond, but he does hazard a look her way.

“I was pretty sure I could trust you,” she says, “and I’m usually right about that kind of thing. But it’s helpful to know more about who you are.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘Captain America’ is who I am,” he says, voice quiet.

That hits her. She still remembers what it was like, fighting against her calling, insisting that she was just _Buffy_ , not the Slayer, not the Chosen One. Now, she feels like she’s choosing it, every day. There are three hundred other girls who can take up the mantle. She does it because she wants to, not because she has to. But he’s the only _Captain America._ That she knows of.

“No, sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean that. I just meant -- I trust my gut. And my gut said to trust you. Some people might tend to question that. But if you walk in, and you’ve got this reputation of being a hero, then no one’s going to second-guess my gut.” She smiles at him. “No gut guessing.”

“I can see where that would be helpful,” he says.

She gets off the couch, walking across the room and sitting down at the other spot at the table. His eyes follow her as she moves. 

“Dawn’s going to figure out Tarak-ha’s next move, no problem,” she says. He’s looking less chagrined now, but the urge to comfort him hasn’t left yet. “She’s pretty much the authority on demon tomes.”

“She’s a friend of yours? You were calling her by a nickname.”

“She’s my sister. And I guess you could say we work together too.”

“Is she a slayer?”

“No,” Buffy says. “She’s more like… a very smart person who’s been doing research on this stuff for longer than some of our slayers have been alive. She helps run things.”

“And can I ask what that looks like?” he asks. “Working with hundreds of other slayers? I find it’s sometimes a challenge to work with only a few other heroes, but hundreds...”

She thinks he might feel more comfortable asking her things than opening himself up to questions, but the more she answers, the less tense he looks. 

And being clammed up? She gets it. For some reason, it’s easy enough to slip into explanation mode.

“There are a lot of places that need help,” she says. “I was called -- I became the slayer, I mean -- when I was fifteen,” (she sees him balk at this, and ignores it) “and I spent years living on something called a Hellmouth, which is pretty much literally what it sounds like. It was an unusually active and volatile place to live. But there are a lot of places that have some degree of vampire and demon activity, and we’ve been able to save a lot of lives through protecting those places.”

He leans forward, glancing down at the table a little awkwardly before placing his forearms on it. She feels him waiting for her to continue.

“We train a handful at a time, as they’re called, or if they ask. They can go back home after, or somewhere that needs help. Whatever they’re comfortable with. New ones get paired with more experienced ones. We’ve got maybe twenty or thirty in London at any given time, another twenty in Rome, seventeen in New York.” (She doesn’t say why it’s less there, but feels the twinge of it.) “I’m not in charge of them or anything. I’m more like a… senior consultant. They bring me in for the tough problems, or when the new recruits need a pep talk. Just since I’ve been doing it longer.”

“They?” Steve asks.

“It’s not a _‘they’_ they. It’s just Dawn and some of my other old friends from back home, and some of the slayers who have been doing this a while.”

“And where’s home?”

“California.”

“I should’ve guessed that,” he says.

She frowns, unsure whether to be offended. (She’s heard one too many valley girl jokes in her life.)

“I just mean, you look like you come from somewhere with lots of sunshine.”

She bites back a smile, and then his eyes go wide. “Because -- you’re American, and blonde, and a little bit tan, and you don’t have much of an accent.”

“Thank you?” she says.

He clears his throat. “You -- your team -- you’ve been able to keep hundreds of powered people working together peacefully?”

“There have been challenges, here and there.” Buffy still feels a wave of sadness when she thinks about Dana, about Simone. “Slayers who are sick, or who think they can make the rules for the rest of humanity, or who want to use their powers to hurt instead of help. It’s never easy. We deal with it as it comes.”

“When did all this happen?” Steve asks. “The change, from one slayer to hundreds. I know I’ve missed a lot, but I’ve never heard about any of this -- slayers. Vampires.”

“Oh gosh,” Buffy says, thinking. “Eleven years ago now? Has it been that long? Yeah. It was two thousand and three. With a few hundred of us, it’s not top secret anymore, but we prefer to operate out of the spotlight, so it’s not exactly common knowledge either.”

“And before that, how long were you-- alone--”

“Seven years,” she says, understanding his question through the jumble of words.

“So you’ve been fighting vampires for--”

“Eighteen years.” 

“That’s quite a while,” Steve says.

“It’s gotta be some kind of record,” Buffy agrees. “And I mean that literally.”

“Ever thought about retiring?” he asks.

“That’s the thing,” she says. “This _is_ my retirement. I’m not the only one anymore. I don’t have to save the day if I don’t want to. Someone else can step in, and they usually do.”

He nods.

“Now,” she asks, “can I ask you something, or is it going to make your jaw get all clenchy again?”

He looks like he’s _about_ to clench his jaw and then visibly fights it off, like he’s thinking about how to _not_ do it, and then he says, “Go ahead.”

“They’ve been saying you’re the same guy from the forties.” 

Okay, no, there’s a clench, even if he’s trying not to.

“We don’t have to talk about this,” she adds.

“It’s okay. Yes. I am the same guy from the forties.” He says it in a tone that’s a little bit ironic.

“So, you’re, what, immortal? You don’t age…?”

“I think I age -- I’m not really sure. It hasn’t been that long for me. But, no, I haven’t been around all this time. I was frozen.”

She can remember bits and pieces of the Captain America story. Something about being the One and Only Super Soldier, saving the world from HYDRA, and then disappearing. Admittedly, she did not pay super close attention in history class, and she’d never been to the Smithsonian. 

And then, poof! He was back, at the Battle of New York, in the same costume and everything. But...

“Frozen?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“What, really? Like Austin Powers?”

“What’s--”

“Oh, right. Sorry. It’s a movie, a comedy, with this secret agent guy. He’s like -- frozen in a tubey thingy, kind of, to keep him in stasis, and they unfreeze him when they need his help again.”

“No, not like that.” Steve leans back and folds his arms. “I was frozen in ice. I went down in a plane crash in the North Atlantic. The serum that made me -- how I am -- stopped me from freezing to death. I was asleep. And they didn’t find me for a long time.”

“Ah.” She feels like she’s intruded, now. “So you… were… frozen in the forties, and got unfrozen? Defrosted? I’m not sure what the right term is, if there is one, sorry. When did you come back?”

“It was almost three years ago.” 

“That’s… Wow. So, what, right before New York.” She doesn’t mean to bring up New York, but it’s slipped out.

“Yeah.”

“That’s, what, sixty-something years,” she says, pivoting away from the topic.

“Sixty-five.”

“Huh. So. From your perspective: waking up in the future. How’s that been going?” she asks.

Unexpectedly, he laughs, and it lights up his face.

“Well, most of my friends are dead, and the ones who aren’t don’t remember me very well.” He pauses, considering. “I’m enjoying Google. You can learn a lot very quickly on your own, now.”

“Boy howdy,” Buffy says. “That’s gotta be a big change from the era of the Dewey Decimal system.”

“It is. There’s a lot that’s changed. Grocery stores. Cable television. _Cell phones_.” 

“Oh! I was around when that one changed, the cell phones. For some of it, anyway. We only had these big, chunky ones when I was a kid, and they didn’t have Google on them.”

“That must have been a big change,” Steve says, and it sounds genuine, even though he’s been through so many larger changes himself.

“I still forget to bring mine with me half the time,” Buffy admits. “It drives Dawn up a wall. But I didn’t get my first one until I was in my twenties. Sometimes I like not being reachable -- or _traceable_. And everyone else has one, so if I need to call someone, I just borrow one.”

He pulls his out of his pocket, gesturing with it to show her. “Some of them aren’t traceable. Just so you know, or in case you need one.”

“Neat,” she says. “But does it have Angry Birds?”

“Maybe?” he says, then looks down like he’s about to unlock it and check.

“I’m joking.” She can’t decide whether she needs to watch what she says, or go out of her way to mess with him.

“Ah.” He grins, and ducks his head.

Mess with him. Definitely. 

Come to think of it, he looks younger than she expected, especially when he’s smiling. Even though she doesn’t follow the Avengers the way Dawn -- and Xander -- do, she’d have to be blind not to notice that Steve is attractive, particularly when he’s sitting there taking up _all of the space_ in her little dining room. She noticed that before she knew who he was -- after all, she’s always had a thing for the tall, broad-shouldered types. She wants to be Professional Buffy on a Mission, but also -- she is human, and she is not blind.

“How old are you?” she asks. “In your time, I mean. Minus the time skip.”

He looks a little surprised, like no one bothers to ask him that sort of thing. 

“Thirty.” He pauses. “Though, to be honest, it’s felt off, celebrating my birthday. I was born in July. When I went under, it was February, but they woke me up in June. Either I turned twenty-eight a month after that, or my birthday’s in November now.”

She narrows her eyes, watching him. “And it feels like it matters?”

“Not exactly,” Steve says. “It just occurred to me, is all.”

She realizes, suddenly, that she missed four months too. She’d died in May and they brought her back in September. By the following January, Buffy was in the thick of it, struggling with the whole heaven thing, but Dawn had insisted on a Buffy Birthday Bash -- the one that ultimately trapped everyone in their house. It wasn’t exactly a joyous celebration. By the year after that, her house was full of potentials, and it was off to the races after that.

“Y’know, I’ve honestly never thought about that,” she finds herself saying out loud.

“About what?” Steve asks.

“Adjusting the birthday.” She’s not sure why she feels compelled to overshare with him, but it’s all she’s been doing since she met him. “I died for a few months, one time. And after I got back, it just never occured to me that I’d lost that time, age-wise.”

“You _died?_ ”

“Wow, that is going to bug me now.”

“For a few _months_ \--?”

“Yes?” she says, feeling self-conscious. “I’ve actually died twice. It’s a long story. But I’m on a great streak now. Buffy Summers: 13 years without an on-the-job death.”

“Do slayers have multiple lives?” Steve asks.

“Oh. No. Valid question, given the context. The first time, I briefly drowned and needed CPR. It’s more of a technicality than real death. The second time, I was big-time gonezo and my friends brought me back with magic.”

“You’re saying magic can bring people back from the dead?” He doesn’t sound tempted by the prospect, but all the same, she wants to shut down that line of thought. 

“Not without -- and I mean this with no exaggeration -- incredibly disastrous unintended consequences. My entire hometown ended up a crater in the ground.”

“I see.”

“Most people, even those who have access to magics, wouldn’t be able to even attempt it. But - I imagine you’ve lost some people and, uh. Don’t go there. Please.” 

“I won’t,” he says. He sounds serious.

“I believe you,” she says.

“Most of my friends had good lives,” he says, thumb rubbing absently at his arm. “To them, I was the one who died.”

She’s not sure what to say.

“Now I’ve got some new ones, and it’s gotten easier, but it’s hard not to wonder what I missed.”

“So, on the temptation scale: resurrection, no. Time machine, yes?”

“Maybe,” he admits.

“That’s valid,” she says. “I’m pleased to say that, despite everything I’ve seen, I have not come across any actual time machines. I can only imagine the havoc they’d wreak.”

He’s quiet, and she’s thirsty, so she gets up to grab a beverage from the kitchen.

“Soda?” she asks. “It’s that or water.”

“Water,” he says. “Thanks.”

She takes her time, pulling a glass out of her cabinet, examining it for dust, rinsing it out, and then filling it up. For herself, she grabs a can of Diet from the fridge, no cup. She places the drink in front of him and sits back down. 

“How’d you go from being unfrozen to being the leader of the Avengers?” she asks, popping open the can. “What about _your_ retirement?”

“I thought about it. But they said they had a mission,” Steve says. “Asked me if I wanted in. I didn’t have anything else to do. Military strategy was my specialty, before, so I took the lead there, but there’s not really a _leader_ of the Avengers.”

“How do you figure?” Buffy squints at him.

“Well, for example -- Tony -- Iron Man, he makes all of our tech himself. Not only designs it. Makes it. And he and Bruce Banner are the two smartest people I’ve ever met. Thor is definitely the strongest, other than Hulk, maybe, but Hulk doesn’t always listen. And Natasha -- Black Widow -- could probably take every one of us out if she put her mind to it. Clint too.”

“Which one’s Clint?” Buffy asks.

“Hawkeye.”

Buffy smiles, trying to be polite. Is Hawkeye the arrow guy? She’s not one hundred percent sure. How many Avengers are there exactly? 

“So you’re saying you’re all equal, and you all have your strengths,” she says.

“I guess that’s what I’m saying.”

“Isn’t that what a good leader does? Notices their team’s strengths and leverages them?”

His cheeks get a tinge of pink and he sips his water. He’s way too humble, and for whatever reason, Buffy is very okay with making him blush.

Her phone buzzes where she left it on the coffee table and she gets up to grab it. There’s a series of texts from Dawn. One from earlier:

_DETAILS?? Now? Kthx_

Then more from just now: 

_Tarak-Ha won’t be in our dimension again until the ritual_

_Ritual must be during new moon. (Night after tomorrow.)_

_Tarak-Ha will need the amulet and a blood sacrifice._

_Demon, not human. V rare demon type. Eryu. Likes water._

_May live in sewer near Thames?? Lol lucky you_

_Find and slay first_

Another buzz, and Dawn’s sent a picture. It’s a photo of a page in a book, featuring the Eryu demon’s description and picture. Eryu’s got the beady eyes, ridged face, pointed ears, and thick neck -- the whole nine, with a distinctive marking on its sternum like an infinity sign. 

She sits next to Steve and places the phone, facing up, between them.

“Dawn’s got answers,” she says. “Tarak-ha’s going to make his move the night after next, and needs one of these bad boys for the ritual. If we can find it first, we can stop this before it begins.”

Steve leans over to look at her phone. 

“Eryu,” he says.

“Yeah. Really not much of a looker.”

“He couldn’t be convinced to run? Hide?”

She looks more closely at the description. “According to this, it wants to be a servant of Tarak-ha. And it’s strong. You’re welcome to try to talk some sense into it, but I find there are generally two types of demons out there: the ones who basically want to be left alone, and the ones who want to cause some damage, up to and including destroying the world.”

Her phone vibrates again, several times, in rapid succession.

_OK now that that’s done_

_ARE YOU STILL WITH CAP, TELL ME EVERYTHING_

_HAS IT OCCURRED TO YOU THAT HE’S EXACTLY YOUR TYPE_

_GET IT (hands up emoji, dancer emoji, hands up emoji, peach emoji)_

_JUST SAYIN (star eyes emoji, fireworks emoji)_

She flips the phone over, but it’s definitely too late, she knows he saw it. This is _also_ why she hates cell phones!

“So, are you ready to pack it in for the night? Or should we go look for the Eryu demon now?” Buffy asks, pushing her embarrassment away. She can kill Dawn later.

“Not tired,” Steve says. He looks like he’s stifling a smile. “Let’s go.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buffy POV. I really appreciate any feedback you leave! :) If this fic is your jam we should probs be friends.

They’re in the sewer near the Thames, as directed by Dawn, not too far from the London Eye. Even at this time of night, they’d had to be careful of the tourists, watching out for stragglers who were meandering around long after the attractions had closed. 

When they’d found a break in the action, Buffy easily strong armed a storm drain out of the pavement and -- poof! They were in.

It wasn’t often she got to expose a beloved, world-famous superhero to the more glamorous side of slaying: the sewer. 

It’s enough to make her feel a little embarrassed. Sure, the slayer gig sounds cool and secret agenty in the abstract: she’s a ‘senior consultant,’ she’s brought in on the tougher assignments, she’s the _original one_. 

But this is the reality of it -- sewer time. Pack your waterproof boots, friends, because we’re going in.

She wonders whether Steve has super smell. She really hopes not.

He looks okay with it all, she thinks, watching him clomp through the shallow puddles. Really, he looks more comfortable walking through the dank, wet tunnel than he’d seemed in her apartment. 

“It’s up ahead,” she says, indicating an upcoming fork in the sewer pipes. They’ll go left. 

She’s targeting hot spots near the Thames. Places she knows she can reliably find some demon action, and where -- if nothing else -- there may be a vamp or two hanging out who knows more. 

It’ll have to do until Dawn is able to get more intel their way in the morning.

\--

Earlier, Steve had looked a little nonplussed as he saw her pack her weapons up -- grabbing the axe where she’d left it and pulling out three stakes (one for her, one for him, and a spare), which she’d put into several easy-to-reach spots on her person. He didn’t have any weapons on him that she could see.

He’d volunteered to drive them again on his motorcycle, and it was less scary this time, knowing that he was Captain America, protector of freedom and purveyor of justice, and not some random ex-military guy on a bucket full of steroids. 

She’d let herself enjoy it a bit, watching the light from the traffic signals reflect off the dark streets and puddles, the overcast sky bright from the full moon behind it. 

“Don’t you have a shield?” she’d asked, giving herself an excuse to lean a little closer. 

“It’s in the back,” he’d said. 

She hadn’t been quite comfortable enough to turn around and look behind her at where ‘the back’ might be, but figured it out after they’d parked, when he popped open a small trunk on the motorcycle and pulled it out.

“Shiny,” she’d said, admiring. 

“It does the job,” he’d agreed, and fastened it to his back.

\--

Now, with the shield on, she thinks even _she_ would recognize him on the street -- and that’s despite the close-cropped beard and lack of a uniform. But then, that’s why they had been trying not to be seen.

They turn left, making their way down the tunnel, until she notices some shadows up ahead. 

“Eyes up,” she says, nodding, but Steve is already looking alert. 

She hears raucous voices before she sees anyone at all, and she knows what that means: vampires. Eryu isn’t likely to be chatting its friends up about its latest kill.

“Vampires. You’re gonna want this,” she says to Steve, and pulls a stake from her jacket, handing it to him. He glances down and there’s a second of uncertainty on his face, but then he takes it, holds it awkwardly.

Four vampires, all male, clustered together, approaching languidly in the opposite direction until they get close enough to -- she assumes -- catch a whiff of human in the air. There’s one up front who’s no doubt the leader, standing ahead of the rest and gesturing with a nod. The others close in, a U-shaped formation, stopping Steve and Buffy from moving any further. Ready to chase them should they try to run.

The leader-vamp sniffs the air. Growls. “A slayer.”

“Yep,” Buffy says. “In case you’re confused, that’d be me -- not him.”

“Your kind is sweet. What a joy that there are so many now. I look for them -- enjoy them so decadently when I find one.”

“You don’t say.”

“You’ll be my fourth,” he says, grinning. She feels something sharp spark in her gut at his words, like seeing red. “I like the young ones better, but you’ll do. C’mon, boys.Have you tried slayer before? We can share this one.”

Before they can act on his command, Buffy springs forward, launching herself at the nearest vampires. She stakes the first two quickly -- one is a straight shot, the other only needs a few hits before she has her angle. 

Once she’s down to the other two, she notices that Steve has also jumped into the fray, fighting the leader. Only, he’s wearing his shield on his arm and is playing defense, the stake hidden in his hand behind the shield. The vamp is laughing, ducking some of Steve’s punches, taking others -- and even when Steve lays him out, he gets up again grinning, joyful in the fight.

“Stay down,” Steve says to him.

“Do it again,” the leader-vamp says, voice a purr. “The blood is always sweeter after a bit of violence.”

“Steve,” she calls to him. “The heart!”

Steve frowns, and smashes the vampire with the shield instead. It makes a dull thud against his head, knocking him down hard.

She makes quick work of the third one. This group isn’t particularly challenging, wouldn’t be even without Steve lending the assist, but then she’s gotten stronger, the older she gets. 

Steve’s _still_ not using the stake, but the leader is up again, so she gets between the two of them, ready to strike the laughing vampire. 

“I wait for their smell on the air,” the vamp says to Buffy, ignoring Steve. “I find them. Your kind always beg for their lives. So ready to kill; never ready to die.” He wipes a trickle of blood from his face, licks it. “Precious little girls.” 

She’s reminded of Spike -- not today’s Spike, fighting the good fight in California, ready for her call should it come. This vampire (alternative views on slayer death wishes aside) is Spike as she first met him: irreverent, and deeply evil. His friends —or minions — are dust, but he’s still enjoying himself. He hasn’t even vamped out.

She’s going to kill him.

“Your kind dust too fast to beg,” she says. 

She wants to beat him to a pulp. Wants to make him beg for his life despite her words. Instead, she grabs his throat and pushes him towards the side of the tunnel until she’s able to slam him against it. 

He laughs again. She backhands him with her other hand, holding him in place. Now, his face shifts, yellow eyes staring into hers. He snarls.

“Do you understand that you’re not going to be killing me today? Is that sinking in for you yet? You stop at three.”

He struggles but doesn’t speak. But maybe he can’t. She’s stronger than he is, and he’d be choking if he needed to breathe. She fights the urge to crush his trachea. She needs to ask him a question.

“You have one chance to live. Eryu demon. Ugly. Infinity sign on its chest. Seen it?”

His nostrils flare. She lets her grip loosen enough for him to speak.

“I don’t associate with demons,” he says.

“Try again.” She pushes him harder into the metal of the wall. He tries to kick her, to twist, but she holds steady, jams a knee into his hip for good measure. Steve stands at the ready behind her, but she’s not concerned about the vamp getting away.

“We saw a nest up ahead. Maybe a mile. It’s new,” the vampire says. “Didn’t exactly ring the doorbell to see who was in. That’s all I know.”

“Cool,” she says, and stakes him. His eyes widen in shock as he turns to dust.

Everything is silent as she catches her breath. Hearing him talk about killing slayers — she needs a moment.

“Buffy,” Steve says.

“Use the stake. Not the shield,” Buffy says, biting back harsher words.

“I’m -- They’re strong. They can really take a hit.”

She doesn’t answer. She’s trying to calm down. Needs to calm down.

“And they look -- human.”

“Is that why you were hesitating?”

“I thought if I knocked him out—”

“Because they’re not. Human. And _they’re_ not going to hesitate when they get a chance at your jugular.”

“You killed him. You told him you’d let him live.”

“You know, Steve, I’m actually feeling okay about lying to a bloodthirsty demon who killed three of my slayers. But thanks!”

He’s quiet for a moment.

“Fine,” he says. “I hear you. But that wasn’t about getting information on Eryu.” He’s found the heart of the matter himself, putting a stake right through it. “It’s about what he said to you. It was rage.”

“Yeah, well.” She shrugs, turning her back to him and pacing away, then back. “ _I’m_ only human. My job isn’t just to protect the world. It’s to protect my girls. It’s because of _me_ they were called. And he isn’t the first one I’ve met who hunts us. His death was fast. It wasn’t cruel. He deserved what he got.”

“And that’s for you to say?”

“Yes.” She’s unequivocal.

“You’re not the judge, jury, and executioner.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong.” She folds her arms, smiling wryly. “I _am_ the law. There is no higher authority than me when it comes to slaying vampires.”

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be that way.”

She frowns, about to speak, but he interjects, calm.

“Not because you’re unjust, but because you’re only human. And the killing… What that does to a person.” (She flinches. She knows what he means.) “Maybe there are other ways to handle this. A process. Confinement, or--”

“What, jail?” She scoffs. “The system isn’t equipped to hold them.”

“That could change.”

“Sure. And if they build one that can hold vampires, Steve, I promise it won’t be long until you and I are in it too.”

He frowns, then looks thoughtful, folds his arms. She continues.

“And what’s the point of jail in the first place? Punishment? Rehabilitation? They’re demons. Literally. That is a _demon_ inside of an old human suit.They don’t have a conscience, no guilt, nothing. No point in punishing them. And they can’t be rehabilitated. I’ve been doing this job for almost two decades and I can count the number of ‘good’ vampires I’ve met on one hand. And a good vamp who’s chosen to be good on their own as a first step -- who hasn’t been forced into it somehow? Zero. None.”

Now she’s thinking out loud. “And sure, we could resoul them all, and then let their human souls suffer for what the demons did -- hope they don’t go crazy from it, or keep feeding from the bloodlust, that sounds great. Or maybe we can take after your military buddies and go back to chipping them. Make it so they can’t bite anyone. That’s great, too, right? You know what that’s not going to stop? Them growing a bunch of demon eggs in their crypt or having their friend kill twice as many people so they can feed too.”

She stops.

“I realize those were very specific examples that may have made no sense to you whatsoever. But my point stands: we’ve been doing this a long time, and this is what it has to be.”

“You’re really sure there isn’t another way?” Steve asks.

“I wish that there were. Really, I do. If there are vamps out there keeping to themselves, buying blood from the butcher or blood bank, living peaceable lives, I am certainly not busting their doors down. You saw me in the demon bar— that’s blood bank blood on tap. They can go about their business in there. But those guys we just saw? They attacked us. There’s no good in them. And, frankly, I’m more concerned with the people who will die if I don’t stop them.”

He’s still got that thoughtful look on his face, staring at a spot between them on the ground. _She_ feels a little deflated, though, and guilty. Like she might have been chewing his head off for no good reason. It’s not his fault. Vamps _do_ look human, that’s kind of how they getcha. And Steve seems like the phasers-set-to-stun type of hero. She takes a step forward and places her hand on his shoulder. He raises his head, meets her eyes.

“It’s not an easy job,” Buffy says. “I’ve met plenty of slayers who’d rather say ‘no thanks’ and walk away, pretend they have no idea what goes bump in the night.”

“No,” he says. “You’re right.”

“I am?” 

Huh. She really doesn’t get to hear that very often. He’s not just playing at being humble -- he can really listen and adjust his views. It’s a rare quality in a hero, in Buffy’s estimation.

“Yes. I don’t see another way. And I -- I wanted to say I see it differently, but I wasn’t exactly asking each Chitauri whether they might reconsider their options, was I?” 

“It’s a luxury we don’t have,” Buffy says.

She hesitates for a second and then grabs at his hand, pulling him gently forward to get him walking again. He looks down at where their hands are joined as he starts walking, expression open, and she shoots him a small smile before letting him go. He smiles back at her.

“C’mon,” she says. “Let’s go find that nest.”

\--

A mile above ground? Fifteen minutes. Easy. Seven, maybe six, if she runs. 

A mile in the sewer? Slower. Much slower.

“It’s funny,” Steve says. “So much has changed, but this is the same.”

“Tracking demons?” Buffy asks.

“No, the sewer. The Howling Commandos and I -- we were in London in forty-four, targeting a suspected HYDRA base. We used the sewer to get in. It’s not exactly glamorous, but it’s effective, if you don’t want to be seen.”

“That’s why the vamps use it,” she says, then thinks out loud. “I mean, it probably _is_ the same. How often is London upgrading its sewer infrastructure?”

“Good point. See?” Steve says. “That’s comforting. Something I can rely on to stay constant.”

“Sure. When all else is lost…” She trails off, noticing an enclave up ahead with a little bit of light emanating. “A demon nest is found.”

He sees what she does. They come to a stop. 

“The book said that Eryu is strong. So, I need you at full throttle here,” she says. “No hesitation.”

He pulls the shield off of his back again and grips it, tightening the strap with the other hand.

“Understood,” he says.

Buffy takes the lead, moving quietly, not wanting to give away the element of surprise. Steve slips into step behind her and, though she can sense him, she can’t hear him at all. Perfect. 

She moves around the corner, poised so that she can see into the nest and -- bingo. 

Eryu is there, sitting (oddly enough) in the center of the small enclave, candles lit around it, as though in meditation. Not only that, but it’s wearing the amulet. The infinity sign on its sternum is just above the glinting dark stone in the amulet. 

Two in one: bonus.

She and Steve can take it -- probably -- but it’s always better not to let a demon get a hit in, in the first place. Buffy doesn’t hesitate, pulling the axe out of her jacket and throwing it in a smooth arc. Ideally, this bad boy would destroy the amulet and Eryu both in one foul swoop. Her aim is good, but Eryu looks up, black eyes meeting hers, and the axe stops midair, hanging frozen. She hears Steve’s breath catch from behind her.

“You can’t stop it,” Eryu says, and before Buffy can get a quip in, it blinks, and it’s gone. 

There’s a frisson in the air. It’s the scent of magic, of teleportation, lighting up and fizzling out. It makes the the drip-drip-drip of the sewer feel cacophonous. 

“Aw, nuts,” Buffy says.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve POV

Steve isn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t that. 

For one thing, their bodies turn to dust. She hadn’t mentioned that. He associates battle with the smell of blood and gunpowder, of course, but also with the thud of bodies to the ground. He imagines he’d have one less scar inside of him if he didn’t have that association -- the sound, and the sight of the bodies, and sometimes the smell. If the bodies had turned to dust instead.

But then, if that were true on both sides, they’d have one less way to mourn their dead, and Steve knows how hard it is to mourn when there’s no body. 

He expects her strength, her confidence, because he’s seen that from her already. He doesn’t expect her speed or her ferocity. The vampires are strong, but Steve and Buffy are much stronger. He’s not worried for their safety, not worried they might lose. Still, she kills ( _ slays _ ) three before he’s really gotten the one under control. 

Steve hasn’t trained for this type of conflict, so maybe he can match her with time, but from what he’d seen tonight -- on speed, and on taking the shot the very second it presents itself,  _ she _ might just have the edge over him.

When she pulls the last one over by his throat, he can see fire behind her eyes, see her fighting for control of herself. He knows what that’s like. 

It makes him worry for her. When he hears her speak later, it’s clear that she still carries this all on her shoulders like she’s the only one. 

She’s beautiful, when she’s fighting. Of course. She looks a little like Clara Bow, that starlet from the silent era that his mother loved, the “It” girl -- with those big doe eyes. He’d have to be a fool not to notice.

And she’s strong. He’s always been drawn to that strength, whether it was Peggy aiming her gun and pulling the trigger without flinching, or Bucky throwing punches to save Steve’s sorry hide (later, throwing staggering metal punches at Steve himself).

It’s the way Buffy moves through the mission -- focused. Ready for a fight. But with a sense of humor and a little bit of brazenness.

Sounds familiar, now that he thinks about it.

Maybe he has a type as well.

\--

Eryu vanishes.

It’s not the first time he’s seen magic. He’s seen that and more from HYDRA, not to mention Thor and Loki, even Tony -- the flying metal suit is still magic to him as far as he’s concerned.

But Eryu’s dark, glassy eyes -- stopping that axe mid-air, disappearing with an eerie blink. It still surprises him. He remembers what it was like when he shared the USO stage with a magician, watching the men burst into cheers as the magician sawed his assistant in half. Absurdly, there’s a second where Steve feels a similar thrill at Eryu, before it sinks in that they’re back at square one, with less than forty-eight hours until it sacrifices itself for Tarak-ha.

They find their way out of the sewer, locating a ladder that leads up to a storm grate on the street. He climbs up first, getting to the top and pushing up the grate. Once he’s on the street he reaches in, offering a hand to Buffy. Though she’d grabbed his hand earlier, she hesitates for a second, but then she takes it. 

Her hand is small in his, warm and soft. It feels delicate. He knows it’s not.

When they’re both standing above ground, they take stock of the quiet, empty street.

“Should I call it in?” Steve asks. “There’s not a lot of time.”

The corner of her mouth turns down, like she’s stifling a laugh. “Call in the Avengers?”

He nods. 

“Please tell me what the big green guy is going to do other than clock Big Ben.” She pauses, nudges him with an elbow. “Get it? Clock? Big Ben?”

That is… very silly.

“I get it, Buffy. But in my experience the Avengers do tend to be helpful in a crisis.”

“I appreciate that, really, but it won’t be necessary. I’ve got a better idea.”

“What’s that?” 

“It’s sort of like calling in the Avengers, only with someone  _ really _ powerful.” Buffy pulls out her phone, which she seems to have remembered to bring with her. She dials. Waits.

“Hey Will, it’s me. I don’t know if you’ve talked to Dawn today, but I’m tracking a demon called Eryu -- or an Eryu demon -- I’m not really sure on the name-species divide here. It wants to open up a hell portal with a bigger, badder demon named Tarak-Ha. The uszh. And it magicked away from us. We’re going to need a tracking spell, at least, and something to stop it from doing that teleportation thing again. We’ll be at headquarters tomorrow at ten thirty. Love you.” 

She hangs up, sticking her phone into her jacket pocket. 

“Who’s--” he starts, but she smiles and cuts in.

“Willow. My friend, and basically the most badass wicca out there. I’m the one they call when they need someone extra plucky to do some punching, but  _ she’s _ the big guns. Think of me as the  _ you _ , and her as the … guy who can fly, with the lightning.”

“Thor?” Steve asks.

“Yes?” Buffy responds, voice going high.

She’s absurd. He can’t stop the laugh that escapes him. “I can understand not knowing every Avenger’s name and tag, Buffy, but you do realize that Thor is the Norse God of Thunder, right? There is a day of the  _ week _ named after him.”

“What, is he the  _ actual _ Norse God of Thunder?”

“By all accounts.”

“I thought he was a wizard guy in cosplay.” She scrunches up her nose. “Did he come from Norway?”

“No. He came from another planet,” Steve says. “It’s called Asgard.” 

“Wow, how long have Norweigians known about aliens?”

Steve frowns, unsure. “That wasn’t really my--” 

“No, actually, you know what? We can talk aliens later.”

Now she’s got him thinking about when and how exactly Thor became entrenched in human ( _ Midgardian) _ mythology. He’s not sure whether Thor would even have the answer. But she’s still talking.

“...The important thing is that Willow is going to handle this. Easily. She will deliver Eryu, and I will slay it. In so doing, we will prevent the Tarak-ha from coming back into our dimension and bringing along the apocalypse. And after that: party down.”

“All right,” Steve says. “So what now?”

“For now, I could use some food and some shut-eye. Big day tomorrow.” 

It’s late. She probably needs to sleep more than he does; most people do.

“So I’ll take a ride home?” she says, like it’s a question. “Along with a promise that you’ll be back at my place tomorrow at ten AM.” 

“I can do that,” he says.

She starts walking back towards where his bike is parked, in the direction of the London Eye. After their sewer adventure, it’s now about a mile in the distance. He shakes his head, clearing it, and follows. 

\--

The walk back to the bike is a hell of a lot quicker than their time in the sewer, and the drive flies right by. He says goodnight to Buffy and, soon, he’s back in his hotel room. He quickly showers the grime off from the sewer, somewhat displeased to realize that his arms are gritty from vampire dust. 

After, he’s too wired to sleep -- or he’s slept too recently. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes. 

It’s only eleven o’clock in Washington. He pulls out his phone and dials. 

“Steve!” Sam picks up after the first ring. He sounds pleased.

“Hi Sam,” he says, a rush of gratitude flowing through him. Sam’s a rare find, someone so easy to talk to, easy to work alongside. He’s missed his voice.

“How’s the  _ break _ going?” Sam asks, voice ironic.

“It’s been… interesting. How are you? How’s Washington?”

“Picking up the pieces. I’m working with a new group, now. Folks who were former-military-turned-SHIELD. It’s a lot to work through, but it’s going.”

“It sounds like you’re doing good work.”

“Nah. They’re doing the work. I’m just helping them direct their energy where it’s most productive.”

“And that’s why you’re the right man for the job.”

“All right, all right, flatter me another time. What have you been doing? Where are you calling me from?”

“London, presently.”

“Yeah? What’s in London?” Sam’s voice is suggestive, like he knows Steve has something specific he’s skating around.

“Natasha gave me some intel about an amulet that needed recovering. And I met this woman, who was tracking it too--”

“Is she SHIELD?” Sam asks. 

“No. She’s something else.” 

“Uh huh.” Sam sounds like he’s fighting back a laugh. 

“No, I don’t mean it like that.” Steve stops. “Sam, have you ever seen a vampire?”

“What? A vampire? Like,  _ ‘I vant to suck your blood _ ’?” (He does the Dracula accent.)

“Right.”

“No, Steve. Why?” he asks, slow, measured. “Do you have something to tell me?”

“They’re real.”

The line is silent for a moment. 

“Fuck that. No.  _ Nope. _ I am not ready for that.”

“The woman, she’s a vampire--” (the word sounds silly as he forces it out) “--slayer.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“I saw it with my own eyes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. The vampires -- they look human, but they can do something to change their faces, when they attack. I saw her kill four of them, stakes through the heart. They turned to dust.” 

“You didn’t happen to smoke or drink anything unusual before you saw this?” Sam asks.

“Sam, you know I can’t.” He hasn’t tried to smoke anything unusual, so he can’t say that for sure, but Sam knows alcohol doesn’t affect him.

“And this girl didn’t do something? No chance she’s playing tricks on you?”

He hadn’t really considered that, but his gut tells him no. He had seen her in that bar, seen that bartender vampire’s face change, before she had known he was there.

“No. She’s who she says she is, as far as I can tell. And she’s -- strong. Almost as strong as I am. But she’s tiny.”

“All right. So tiny girl was tracking this amulet, because, what? A vampire had it?”

“A demon,” Steve says, closing his eyes and rubbing them. 

“C’mon, man,” Sam says with a groan. “Aliens and gods weren’t enough? You had to go take a ‘break’ and stumble into finding out vampires and demons are real?”

Steve laughs, but it’s like it’s forced out of him. Sam’s reaction is a balm. He’s been going along with it all because that’s what he does when he’s on a mission, and because he’d stumbled into  _ her _ world so he let her take the lead. But talking to Sam is like being back in his own world, where this is very slightly ludicrous.

“So what, now? Gonna go buy a big crucifix? Whittle a wooden stake?”

“We’re still in the middle of this thing. Trying to get the amulet back before it can be used to let in something really nasty from another world.”

“Do you need help?”

Steve lets himself smile. Having Sam is different -- but just as good -- as having Bucky at his side. He could say yes, and Sam would be on his way tonight. Just because Steve asked, not because he commanded, “Avengers Assemble.” It’s a nice feeling.

But, he doesn’t need the help right now. “She says it’s under control.”

“You trust her.” It’s not a question.

“She’s smart,” Steve says. “Strong. And she’s been doing what she does for a long time.”

“Is she cute?” Sam asks, far too good at reading him.

“That’s not -- really --”

“ _ That’s _ not a no.”

“I’m focused on the mission,” Steve says. 

“Sure,” Sam says. “What’s her name?”

It honestly hadn’t occurred to him until this moment, but he knows how similar the name sounds. He knows what he’s going to get as he says it. “Buffy.”

Sam laughs, boisterous, and Steve finds himself smiling and shaking his head. 

“Really? Buffy?”

“Yes,” Steve says.

“A slayer named Buffy,” Sam says. “That’s  _ almost _ a soldier named Bucky.”

“Close, but no cigar,” Steve agrees.

“I’m not going to make the joke that I’m thinking of right now,” Sam says. “Your virgin ears couldn’t handle it.”

“Hey,” Steve says, affronted, though he’s not one hundred percent sure what the joke would be.

“Is that all?” Sam asks, “Just demons and vampires?”

“So far.”

“No leprechauns?”

“Sam.”

“I’m serious. They’re probably real too.”

“You’re messing with me.”

“No, I’m happy for you. Told you you needed a hobby, didn’t I?”

“You might have said that once or twice.”

“Yeah? And I’m gonna keep saying it, till you take a real break.”

“I appreciate that.”

“All right. I need to be up at oh five hundred, so I’m going to sign off. Gonna have some weird dreams, too, with this vampire stuff.” He pauses. “You’ll call me if the situation changes?” 

(If you need me, he doesn’t say.)

“I will.”

“And I wish you luck with your new strong-but-tiny girlfriend.”

“She’s not--”

“Your girlfriend. Uh huh. So we’ve said about our crushes since the dawn of time.”

He ignores that remark.

“Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. For listening.”

“Anytime.”

\--

He gets a little rest, eventually. Not sleep, but he lays down with a book, then rests his eyes, and that’s good enough. 

In the morning, he waits, watching the clock as it slowly ticks to 9:00, 9:30, 9:35, 9:40… And when it’s time, he pulls on a pair of dark slacks and a t-shirt, and grabs his shield, slinging it over his back. 

Time to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clara Bow reference is borrowed from a nautibitz fic (Don’t Stop). I didn’t know who Clara Bow was before nauti wrote about her. :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve POV.

Steve arrives at her door at 9:58. 

He’s a little nervous, not about the mission (though he’s still ready to call it in, if things change), but about what it feels like to be standing at a pretty girl’s door.

Steve had never gotten that dance with Peggy. To him, this is about as close as it gets to a date. He tries to stifle those thoughts, to shove them down, to _not_ listen to Sam’s laughing voice in the back of his mind, and it mostly works, but his heart still beats a little faster than normal.

When he rings the doorbell, she calls, “Just a minute!” from somewhere in the apartment, and he waits, shuffling a bit, bearing his weight on one foot, then the other.

The hall, like the interior of her apartment, is claustrophobically small to him, and he’s wearing the shield, which makes him -- if not recognizable -- then at least conspicuous. There’s only one other door on this level of her building, but there are stairs that go to other floors, and what if someone needs to get by him, the shield does stick out a bit, and--

She opens the door. 

“Hi!” she says. “Ready?”

It’s taking him a second to find his voice. He nods.

She moves to lock the door, and he has to step on one of the stairs to get out of her way. Thankfully, he’d chosen to step _down_ one, so when she turns, he’s ready to set off. 

“Thought you seemed like the punctual type,” Buffy says. 

“Thanks.” It had sounded like a compliment but he’s not entirely sure.

“Did you get any sleep?”

“I got some rest,” he says. “You?”

“Took a little while to fall asleep, but then I was _out_. It’s hard, sometimes, winding down after a fight, but once it finally hits you how tired you are...” She trails off.

“I know what you mean.”

“Yeah?” She looks like she’s studying him for a second, like she knows ‘rest’ and ‘sleep’ aren’t the same in his book. “We’ve got coffee, if you need it.”

He’s never been much of a coffee drinker, particularly since the caffeine doesn’t affect him, but he nods and thanks her anyway. 

They make their way out to the street. He’s got the helmet sitting on the back of his bike, ready for her. It’s like a corsage, a bouquet of flowers. It’s as close as he’s gotten. (He tamps the thought down.) She stops by the bike, notices the helmet waiting there.

“It’s around the corner, actually.” She smiles. “We can walk.”

\--

‘Headquarters’ turns out not to be as grand as he might have imagined. It’s a large terraced house, not a sprawling, glass and cement building like the Triskelion. The exterior looks older, maybe Victorian, and it’s three stories tall. It reminds him of Brooklyn, the building he lived in as a kid, only nicer.

Buffy walks in without knocking, hanging up her red leather jacket on a coat rack by the door. The chestnut wooden floors creak as he steps inside. 

At the entrance, there’s a staircase with a large bannister, and two young women walk down the stairs, eyeing Buffy and Steve, but they don’t speak until they’re around the corner, launching into a low whisper. 

“Might wanna take this off if you want to go incognito,” Buffy says, rapping a dull beat against the shield. 

As he starts to remove it, looking around for a closest to stash it in (surely no one would take it, right?), a voice sounds from the hallway to their left. A man with short black hair and an eye patch is walking towards them, grinning.

“The Buffster!” 

“Xander!” Buffy smiles back at him, greeting him with a warm hug. He squeezes her tight. She’d said some of the others working with the slayers were long-time friends, and this is clearly a reunion. “I wasn’t expecting to see you. How’s Cleveland?” 

“Gotta love the Cleve,” Xander says. “Fantastic restaurants, Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, and I can honestly say that it’s the easiest Hellmouth I’ve ever had the _dis_ pleasure of living on.” 

“Oh!” Buffy lets him go with a sudden jolt. “Wait, I need to introduce you--”

Xander steps back, eyes moving to Steve, who happens to be holding his shield in his hands, watching them like a deer caught in the headlights. Xander’s eyes flit down to the shield, then back to Steve’s face.

“Is that--” Xander starts.

Steve releases the shield from one hand, letting his arm hang down at his side, and holds out his other hand to Xander in greeting. 

“Steve Rogers,” Steve says.

“Uh huh,” Xander says, shaking Steve’s hand. “Is the world ending, Buffy? Are we in imminent apocalypse mode?”

“Not especially?” Buffy says, sounding unsure. 

“Then why are we calling in the Avengers?” 

“We’re -- not -- calling in the Avengers,” Buffy says. 

“Is that or is that not Captain America?” Xander asks, voice getting a little louder. “He’s got the shield. Buffy, have you seen the shield?”

(Some of the other young women, slayers Steve guesses, seem to be gathering in a nearby doorway, no doubt trying to figure out what the fuss is about.)

Steve offers a polite smile. “I just go by ‘Steve.’”

“We met on patrol,” Buffy says, sounding defensive. “We were both looking for an amulet-thingy. It seemed rude to leave him out once I was tracking it.”

“And now he’s here,” Xander says. He looks a little glassy-eyed. 

“Just looking to help,” Steve says, feeling a need to explain himself.

“Great! Help. We love help. Can always use some help!” Xander lets out a nervous, high chuckle.

Steve looks at Buffy, who is looking at Xander with something between frustration and affection. Not knowing quite what to do next, Steve places the shield at the bottom of the coat rack, so the tails of Buffy’s coat partially block it from view. That’ll do. Maybe putting it out of sight will help.

Maybe not. Xander is still staring.

He’s dealt with this before, on the streets of New York or Washington when he’s out for a run. He’s still never quite sure what to do with people who get starstruck, because in his mind, he’s just a guy from Brooklyn, and he’s not actually very exciting to talk to.

Usually, they take out their camera phone and Steve poses for a picture with them. That tends to make them happy, often they’ll bounce away right after, and Steve can feel pretty good too. Sometimes they’ll walk after him for a block or two, but if they do that he just speeds up on his run until they can’t follow. He figures then he doesn’t have to be rude _and_ they can tell their friends they saw how fast Captain America can run in real life.

He can’t exactly do that here.

Buffy grabs Xander by his arm and pulls him down the hallway, but she looks at Steve and nods her head in an unmistakable “c’mon” gesture. Steve obliges. The doorway up ahead has a few women in it, looking their way, but some of them walk off as Buffy and Xander approach, getting back to what they were doing. The ones who remain seem to be in the middle of their own quiet conversation, and only shoot Steve, Xander, and Buffy a quick glance before disregarding them. 

“Have you seen Will around?” Buffy asks.

Xander shakes his head. “Not yet. She’s on her way in. Sent a supply list earlier this morning.” 

“Supplies, as in, for a specific spell? That’s gotta be a good sign,” Buffy says.

They get to a kitchen, outfitted with three high tops along one wall (one occupied) and a large island in the center, which is covered in snacks and surrounded by bar stools. There’s a pile of papers in the center with an unloaded crossbow on top like a paperweight. The room is smaller than the kitchen at Avengers tower, but the feeling is the same: a room for lots of people to gather.

“So, um, how do you two know each other?” Steve asks.

“High school,” Buffy says, right as Xander says, “Hellmouth.”

“Hell school,” Xander continues. “Hellmouth high school. Uh. We went to high school on a hell mouth. Together. Not in Cleveland, it was a different--”

“Xander and I met when we were sixteen,” Buffy says, mercifully cutting him off. “He was my first friend in Sunnydale -- the town we lived in -- who found out I was the slayer. And he’s stuck around and been a major world saver ever since.” 

“Sometimes with crayons,” Xander says, but doesn’t explain further. Steve doesn’t ask.

“Now, he helps with some of the slayers in Cleveland, but he splits his time between there and here, kind of like I do with Rome.” 

Buffy moves across the kitchen, pulling two mugs out of a cabinet and pouring some coffee into them from the pot on the counter. She places one steaming cup in front of Steve, puts her own next to his, and then crosses past Xander to grab a banana. Steve thinks he hears her whisper _“Be normal!”_ into his ear as she walks by. Xander says, “Uh huh, trying,” a little louder (loud enough for Steve to be sure) as Buffy unpeels the banana and takes a bite. She sits next to Steve on a barstool and he takes her cue and sits as well. 

He thanks her before taking a sip of his coffee. It’s weaker than the stuff he used to drink, brewed over a real fire with the Howling Commandos, when he’d have a cup for the camaraderie and not the taste. He supposes that part isn’t so different, now.

“Who’s here?” Buffy asks Xander, once she’s done chewing. 

“Just a few of the girls,” Xander says, clearing his throat. “Andrew’s taken a group up north for a training exercise, so you’re looking at a mix of the too-busy and the uninterested.”

“My kind of girls,” Buffy says, voice bright and filled with humor. She seems to catch herself, then frowns, glance shooting over to the two girls seated at a high table on the opposite wall. “Not that training isn’t… important. Or of the good. It’s definitely a thing that… we all should be doing.” She pauses, seemingly satisfied with her correction, and Steve stifles a laugh. 

She turns back to Xander. “Is Dawn here?”

“Grabbing the supplies Willow asked for,” Xander says.

“When did she leave?” 

Xander looks at the clock on the microwave. “Maybe half an hour ago? Forty-five minutes? I know she wanted to get back before you got here, said said something about you and an icon destroying an amulet--” He has a look of emerging understanding, eyes drifting to Steve. “ _Oh._ She could’ve been a little clearer. I thought she meant you had a talisman or something.”

“I’m thinkin’ she wanted to see the look on your face,” Buffy says. 

Steve interjects, thoughtful, despite himself. “More like a _tall_ \- _ish_ man.”

“Funny.” Xander laughs, and it turns into a giggle. “Captain America is funny.”

“Oh, Dawn’s gonna be disappointed she missed this.”

Steve has his moments, when he loses the thread of the conversation in the midst of new slang or references he doesn’t understand, but he’s following this one. It sounds like Dawn has a few things in common with her sister.

“We can stage a redo,” Steve offers. “Start over when Dawn gets here? I used to punch Hitler on stage every night. Got a cheer every time.”

Xander giggles again. 

“Reel it in, Xander,” Buffy says.

“Reeling,” he replies, turning his laugh into a cough. “Help me out here, Buff. Distraction? What’s the sitch exactly? Where’s the big bad?”

“Okay,” Buffy says, disposing of the banana peel and retaking her seat. “So, we got a tip that a demon had his hands on an amulet originally belonging to an old-realm bad guy named Tarak-ha. I went to check out the lead, and found that the demon who supposedly had the amulet had already handed it off. Dawn did some research and found out that the amulet has to be worn by another demon, called Eryu, who does some self-sacrifice magic badness to bring Tarak-ha back to our reality and bring hell with it. We tracked _that_ demon, but it poofed away, so I called Willow for some wicca-ssistance.”

“And what’s the timeline here?” Xander asks. “Before the Tarak-ha badness ensues?”

Steve can hear a little bit of what must be the _normal_ Xander -- calm under pressure, unintimidated by the scope of the mission Buffy’s described. And the two of them have a comfort in the mission that Steve has found only comes through years of weathering dangerous situations together.

“Countdown clock is set to tomorrow night,” Buffy says. “I’m thinking, Willow can either track it or conjure it, and we can slay Eryu and prevent badness.”

“Do we have to slay him?” Steve asks, the thought suddenly occurring to him.

“It’s a demon,” Xander says. “That’s kind of the M.O.. What are you suggesting?”

“Well, he was wearing the amulet,” Steve says to Xander, but he’s looking at Buffy. “We just need to destroy that. That’s the key that opens the door.” 

Xander and Buffy both seem to blink at that remark, and he’s not sure why. He presses on. “So I’m saying, let’s destroy the amulet and let Eryu go.”

“Maybe,” Buffy says, furrowing her brow like she’s thinking it through. “I’d want to look into what Eryu does for fun. Is it hanging in a crypt waiting for big T-h, minding its own business, or is it off, y’know, rampaging and killing. Dawn would know.”

“Let’s ask her, then,” Steve says. 

He doesn’t want to kill, or watch Buffy kill. Not if there’s another way. Sometimes there isn’t, and he takes her point about the vampires, about them not hesitating when _they_ go for the kill -- but Eryu is something different, isn’t he? They should at least check. This defacto kill-first-ask-questions-later approach rankles Steve.

“You’ve got my word that we’ll figure out if Eryu is a threat without the amulet, and only slay him if the answer is yes.”

“Thank you,” Steve says. 

He knows that he’s pushing her in a different direction, but she’s got a small smile on her face that he can’t help but mirror. It’s clear that Buffy and her friends are striving for good, to protect people, to hold that above all else. And Steve knows there are sacrifices in that, sometimes picking the good over the ideal. Still, he’d expected her to be more rigid, more set in her ways, with the way she’d spoken before. He’s pleasantly surprised.

Buffy finishes her coffee, then gets up to put the mug in the sink. 

“So, we’ve got a little time to wait for Dawn and Willow. Do you want the grand tour?” she asks. 

He takes a few more sips, too, not wanting to appear ungrateful. “Sure.”

\--

There’s some sort of wordless communication between Xander and Buffy on their way out of the kitchen, and Xander ends up excusing himself, something about a morning check-in with the group. 

Steve wouldn’t mind taking a tour with both of them, particularly once Xander settled down a little, but the tour with Buffy alone is a bit more comfortable. Being with her had almost made him forget the kind of reception he usually gets from new people.

Meanwhile, _grand_ tour is putting it strongly, though the house is very nice. The main floor has the big eat-in kitchen, an adjacent large room that looks like it could be used for a big Thanksgiving dinner or a conference call, and a smaller living room equipped with some worn couches. The second and third floors have bedrooms, bathrooms, and the occasional library or media room. 

It reminds him of a university. He’d never dormed when he was in art school, but he’d known kids who had.

(He pushes the thought away, of how old those _kids_ are now, how many may not still be around. The remembering, then the pushing away, is getting faster and easier but it still stings sometimes. Less so, when he’s distracted.)

As they walk, she explains that the building used to be ‘Watcher’s Council’ residences, before the council’s _actual_ headquarters building had been blown up by another big evil, years back. 

“So, there used to be an entire group of people employed full time to help the slayer?” he asks.

“Yes to the ‘entire group of people employed full time,’ but I’m not signing onto the idea of the council being in any way helpful,” she says. “Every slayer was assigned a watcher, who was a book-smart type educated on all the different demons and was there to, y’know. Watch. And train her. But that watcher could be anywhere along the spectrum from ‘literally evil’ to ‘brilliant and heroic,’ and the slayer didn’t get to choose who was a fit for her or ask for a different one if it wasn’t a match. And then there was the whole _cruciamentum_ steal-your-powers-on-your-18th-birthday-to-see-if-you-die thing. I don’t even wanna get _into_ that.” 

He wants to ask, but doesn’t, not if she doesn’t want to get into it. They make their way back downstairs, then down another flight of stairs towards the basement. 

“Point is?” she continues. “We changed it. Everyone has options. You can have a watcher, or you can have a slayer mentor, instead. You can join a group that all works together, a few slayers and a couple of watchers. Or you can hang solo. We’ve got HQ for the girls who are in training, or who need a place to live. But my vision for this new slayerhood has always been that every piece of it is optional, other than the using-your-powers-for-evil side of things. That’s not allowed. And more flexibility gives all of us what _I_ always wanted: the ability to have a normal life.”

A normal life.

Steve had wanted that, too, before he went down in the ice. He’d loved leading the Commandos. Had relished each and every mission, every HYDRA base they’d shut down. But through it all, he’d always thought that eventually they’d _win_ and go home. And if he were lucky, maybe he’d get to spend some time with his best girl, too, once they had more time to spare. 

Then, he went to sleep for sixty-five years, and when he woke up nearly everyone was gone -- and it was even more painful with the ones who weren’t.

Now, he has new friends, but there’s no more of that feeling, like someday he might be able to lay down his shield and pick up a real life.

They come to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, and he’s happy to be distracted from his thoughts. The basement is a large training room, equipped with mats on the walls and floors. One long wall is lined with heavy-duty punching bags, and another wall is dotted with archery targets (he thinks of the crossbow he saw upstairs). The middle of the room is spacious enough for a few small groups to run drills. Everything looks well used, but well maintained -- with a bit of wear around the edges, but patches on the bigger tears. She stops in the middle of the room, a few steps away from him.

“This is where the magic happens,” Buffy says. “Not… literally. The literal magic probably happens in the dining room.”

“It’s nice,” Steve says. He means it. 

“It does the job,” Buffy agrees. She looks him up and down, and Steve notices a gleam in her eyes that wasn’t there before. “Hey.” 

“Yeah?”

“I was wondering how strong you are. I’ve been getting stronger, so I have to be careful when I’m training with the girls. And we didn’t get a chance to figure that out, before.” 

He looks down at the mats, then back at Buffy. He sees her see it.

“Me too,” he admits. He can feel his heart speeding up, like when he was outside her door. “I wondered, about you, too.”

“You game?” she asks. 

He feels himself nod.

She toes off her shoes and socks, pushing them towards the wall, and he does the same, feeling irrationally vulnerable at the thought of letting someone see his feet -- but mats tend to work better barefooted. And anyway, she’s looking at his face, not his feet, as she drops into a sparring stance. He does the same. 

He’s just thinking about how he’s _not_ going to be comfortable making the first move when she charges him, aiming a punch at his stomach that he blocks. She tries again, leveling a few at his head, his neck, his ribs, and he backs up, staying out of her reach, until finally she lands one against his ribcage. 

Steve feels it, but it doesn’t throw him.

“You’re holding back,” Steve says.

“You haven’t even tried to hit me,” Buffy replies. “C’mon.”

He wants to. Wants to test her, test himself. And it all feels like this is a way to test something else, too. He also does _not_ want to hit someone who doesn’t deserve it, and, yes, particularly a woman. 

Natasha would tell him to snap out of it, to can the misogynistic crap. He’s sparred with Tash before, and she has no problem with knocking him down when the opportunity presents itself.

So, Steve throws a punch, and Buffy dodges it, then _she_ lands a second punch, and this one smarts. The wind is knocked out of him.

He starts trying to tag her in earnest, now, even if he’s still pulling his punches, and goes for one, two, three hits -- all of them ducked, the fourth one blocked, and then he grabs her arm on the next block, and they struggle, pushing at each other, until they launch away. He thinks she’s still holding back, but then so is he. 

She charges him again, this time aiming a roundhouse kick at his head (higher than she should be able to reach), but he swerves, avoiding the worst of it, and sweeps his leg under her. She trips, but grabs his arm on the way down and hauls him down with her.

They jump back up, springing apart, and he has a sudden moment where he feels naked without the shield -- it’s such a big part of how he fights -- but he pushes the thought away and, anyway, she’s leveling punches and kicks at him, rapid fire. He’s returning them almost as fast, landing some, dodging others, their intensity gradually increasing, until she lands a solid kick to his chest and sends him flying across the room, hitting the wall on the opposite side. 

“Steve!” she calls, running towards him, but he’s up already.

“I’m fine,” he says, and something shifts behind her eyes.

She smiles before she attacks this time, and _now_ he thinks she might not be holding back, or at least not as much. He matches her blow for blow, hits every bit as hard as she does, and when she ratchets it up further, so does he. Still, he lets her set the pace, staying attuned to their surroundings, keeping the sparring contained, aware that if they didn’t stop themselves they might smash right through those padded walls. 

Buffy jumps towards him, launching into a backflip which ends in a kick to the head that sends him sprawling. She lands several feet away and brushes the hair out of her eyes. He stands, wipes at his mouth.

“You’re good,” she says.

“You too.” 

They rush towards each other again, their motion a blur. His earlier suspicions are confirmed. He’s still holding back on strength, but he’s all out on speed right now and she’s beating him there, landing blows he’s trying his hardest to dodge. She knocks him down with another powerful kick, but he grabs her as he falls, and she lands on top of him in an ungraceful heap, her knees jabbing into his midsection.

Somehow, both of them stop here. She sits up, peering over him, her knees pressing into his ribs. He’s flat on his back, his hand still on her leg, but he makes no effort to move it. He’s a little out of breath, and more than a little warm. Buffy must be too; he can see the patches of pink high on her cheeks and the way her breath is shuffling that wayward strand of hair until she has to loop it behind her ear once more. 

Neither of them speak, but Buffy lifts a hand towards his face, like she’s about to touch him, and -- they both hear the steps at the same time. Buffy jerks her hand away, looking up. So does Steve, removing his hand from her leg as he rushes to sit.

“Buffy?” a female voice says. It’s a woman, with long brown hair, making her way down the stairs while Xander follows. Once the woman gets to the bottom, she folds her arms with a smirk, evaluating the scene before her.

“Yeah, this seems about right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Head's up that another Steve/Buffy fic called _[Kicking ass in the morning, taking names in the evening](https://archiveofourown.org/works/962596)_ by victoria_p (musesfool) also features a Steve/Buffy sparring scene which was inspirational in the creation of this one. :) Go read it, if you haven't.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to crazygirlne for hopping in and providing feedback on my drafts! :)

It’s the second time in twenty-four hours that Buffy resolves to give Dawn a good killing later. 

Of course, she should have known that sooner or later Dawn and Will would be back, and that Xander would happily lead the hunt back to her and Steve. Maybe it was more her fault for getting so caught up in the sparring that they caught her by surprise.

Still. A little embarrassing. A little too _her_.

Buffy stands and extends her hand to help him up but he’s already in the middle of a kick-to-stand, and she lets herself stare a little at the line of skin across his midsection that’s exposed as he lands on his feet, because why not. Once he’s up, she wipes her palms against her jeans, and folds her arms, approaching her sister.

“Steve, Dawn. Dawn, Steve,” she says. 

Steve, being much more polite than Buffy or any the Scoobies, extends a hand, and Dawn shakes it, looking him over. 

“Hey Cap,” Dawn says.

“Nice to meet you,” Steve replies. “I’ve heard good things.”

He’s too sweet for his own good. It’s gonna get him into trouble where Dawn is concerned. She looks between Steve and Buffy, then back. Raises her eyebrows at them.

“So, who’s stronger?” Dawn asks. “Willow and I have a bet going.”

“I think it was a draw,” Steve says.

“Yeah. Unclear.” Buffy frowns. “Wait. A bet? Which one of you bet against me?”

“Buffy. It should be obvious. I did,” Dawn says, breaking into a grin, and turning around to head back upstairs. “Willow’s looking through the stuff right now. Says we’re gonna have to head back to wherever it was you saw Eryu in order to do the conjuring.”

“Goody,” Buffy says, setting up the stairs. “More sewer time.”

\--

The four of them find Willow in the dining room, sorting through a few piles of magical ingredients that Buffy would probably be able to recognize by sight by now if she’d been paying attention for the last decade and a half. 

Oh well.

Steve cranes his neck as they approach, looking curious, and then his eyes fall onto Willow. 

“Steve Rogers,” he says again, offering his hand. “You must be Willow.”

“Ooh, I can’t,” Willow says, holding hers up, but waving hi instead. “Dragon thistle is super sensitive, and the oil from our skin turns it caustic. I had to do a protective incantation for this part, the mixing.” 

Steve lowers his hand, resting his arms somewhat awkwardly by his sides.

“Not that it’s not nice to meet you!” Willow looks vaguely alarmed, like she realizes she may have just insulted him. “Because it is. I’m a big fan of your, y’know... Saving the world from aliens and HYDRA. And, hey! Now you’re friends with Buffy. She’s also very into saving the world. So that’s neat.”

Steve smiles. “I’ve heard you’re also a major world saver around here.” 

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Willow says, looking reluctant. “I’ve had my moments.”

Buffy hears that as Willow referencing her near-world _ending,_ always fresh in her mind, no matter how many years pass. It’s still a source of her own magical grounding, not going to that place again. Buffy hears that, but figures Steve will only hear it as humility. That works too.

Buffy sits and, taking her cue, so does Steve. Dawn and Xander move to the opposite side of the table.

“What’s the status?” Buffy asks.

“Oh, the demon conjuring?” Willow asks. “Easy peasy. I just need to mix the ingredients for the spell, and -- oh, Buffy, can you pass me that mortar and pestle?”

Buffy grabs the marble mortar and pestle from one side of the table, careful not to touch the interior where the ingredients will go (that much she knows), and puts it down next to Willow. 

“Thanks. So, where was I? Right. Mix ingredients. Go back to where you met this demon--”

“Sewer?” Xander asks.

“Sewer,” Buffy confirms, wrinkling her nose. 

“And then boom! Conjuring. Well, not an actual boom, more like a ‘pop.’ And then I’ll magic the amulet right off him, and you’ll just need to--” Willow mimics a staking motion.

“About that,” Buffy says, as she feels Steve tense slightly beside her. “Dawn, what’s the story with Eryu? What’s he doing when he’s not trying to sacrifice himself to summon Tarak-ha?”

Dawn shrugs. “From what I was reading, the seeking Tarak-ha is kind of its thing. Eryu is sentient, it can speak and listen, but it’s not the kind of demon that’s gonna curl up with some Funyuns and the new season of Grey’s Anatomy when it’s bored.”

“Does it kill?” Buffy asks. 

“Hold on, let me pull my notes back up.” Dawn takes out her phone, reading off of it. “It’s not exactly a killer. It’s mostly a snoozer. Eryu wakes when the amulet is near. I’m talking, like, same country: activate. And its sentience is tied to the amulet. The closer the necklace, the sharper Eryu gets.”

“So, not a kill-maim-destroy demon,” Buffy says.

“Hey, what’s with the self-sacrifice bit?” Xander asks. “Seems to run counter to the whole survival instinct thing.”

Buffy shrugs. “We’ve seen it before. Remember those demons who wanted to reopen the hellmouth by jumping into it? 

Xander nods. “Point.”

“Eryu believes that it will merge with Tarak-ha when it summons him,” Dawn says. “That its corporeal essence only serves to unite it with Tarak-ha.”

“So, _dumb_ , but not especially evil,” Buffy says. 

“I wouldn’t say not evil,” Dawn says. 

“But on a scale of, say, Clem to the First…” 

“I don’t know,” Dawn says. “Middle, maybe? It can definitely tear some shit up once it’s working to free Tarak-ha. If you’re asking me whether it eats humans or kills for fun, the answer is no. But at the end of the day it _is_ trying to rip our reality open.”

“Sure,” Buffy says, “but you said it’s because he wants to merge with Tarak-ha, and he’s only sentient in pursuit of that. It’s kind of not his fault when you think about it.”

Dawn furrows her brow, then looks between Buffy and Steve. Buffy feels a little too seen. Dawn has always been open to friendly demons and vamps -- she’s not committed to the black and white like the watchers of yore. But like the rest of them, she usually needs to see some evidence of demon-goodness before extending that olive branch. Talking like this during slayer research time is not usual for any of them.

“What _does_ it eat?” Xander asks, looking thoughtful. “Not Funyuns. Not humans.” 

“Small animals. Birds,” Dawn says. 

“Eugh,” Buffy says. 

“Buffy, I hate to break this to you,” Xander says. “But you also eat small animals and birds.”

“Well, yeah, when you put it like _that_ ,” Buffy says. 

“What are our options?” Steve asks. “Other than killing it. And what happens to Eryu when the amulet is destroyed?”

“Unclear,” Dawn says. “They’re connected. So it’s possible that destroying the amulet destroys Eryu too. But it’s never been destroyed before, so I’m not sure.” 

“And if we don’t slay him?” Buffy asks. “Will? Options?” 

“I can trap him in a crystal? Send him to another world?” 

“Can you send him to Tarak-ha’s world?” Buffy asks. “Then they can be together, even if they’re not merged.” 

“I think so,” Willow says. “The amulet is probably getting its power from a self-contained dimensional rift, and then the demon’s life force is channeled into it, it breaks the walls down further. If I have the amulet, I can probably channel its magic into sending them both into Tarak-ha’s world. I won’t know for sure until I feel it.”

“If you send Eryu and the amulet to Tarak-ha, will they be able to open the walls to our reality from that side?” Buffy asks.

“No, I don’t think so. My guess is the amulet will only have enough juice for one trip, but, again, I’ll have to feel it to be sure.”

“Okay,” Buffy says. “We’ve got a plan, then. Step one: you finish the magic prep sesh. Step two: we all go hang in the sewers. Step three: we summon Eryu and send his ass back to Tarak-ha, locking the door on the way out. And Steve and I will be there in case things get dicey.”

“Actually,” Dawn interjects. “As much as I love quality sewer time with the fam, Xander and I need to catch up on a few things.”

Buffy is well aware that Dawn and Xander have _something_ going on, but with Xander in Cleveland looking after his girls, and Dawn leading the research side of things in London, it tends to be in flux. Dawn hasn’t been as forthcoming with her as she normally is. She’s said she doesn’t want to put Buffy in the middle of their business, and Buffy can’t exactly blame her. 

Still, Buffy narrows her eyes at them, unable to resist the urge to press.

“Xander, you’re really passing on your chance to go on a mission with Captain America?” 

Xander lets out a small noise, then clears his throat. “Yes. That is correct.”

“Kay!” Buffy says, bright. “Suit yourself. Will, how long till we’re ready?” 

“Ten minutes?” Willow says. “Let me just pack up.” 

“Perfect,” Buffy says. “Steve? Change of venue?” 

\--

“Sorry about the whole ‘mission with Captain America,’ thing,” Buffy says. She’s sitting with Steve in the lounge, on an old leather sofa. “It seems like you like it better when we call you Steve, but… I couldn’t help myself.”

“It’s fine,” Steve says. “I get it. Hey, I even have the uniform in my hotel room. If you really want to mess with him, I could suit up.”

She blinks. Buffy _wants_ to give him credit for his sense of humor, his ability to roll with the punches, but all she can think at first is that there _is_ something intriguing about the idea of seeing him in that suit in person. She’s not sure if her expression’s given her away, but when she looks up again he’s studying her, and she starts gabbing to cover. 

“That’s all right,” she says. “Xander and Dawn are working through something right now and I’m not sure how much it’s going to help for Xander to be making goo goo eyes at you in the suit.” She tilts her head, thinking. “Unless Dawn is, too, maybe. Then it could work.”

Steve seems to ignore that comment. “You really think Willow can do all this?”

“Oh, yeah,” Buffy says, voice positive. “This is small potatoes for her. She could probably rip that portal open to Tarak-ha without ever using the amulet if she wanted to.” 

She pauses, remembering that Steve’s also in charge of protecting humanity, and did not have the benefit and bias of knowing Willow for the last zillion years. 

“She… wouldn’t want to,” Buffy says, by way of clarification. 

“I figured,” Steve says. 

“She’s more the Glenda the Good Witch type,” Buffy adds, and Steve nods. “Spends a lot of her time at this coven up north along with another old friend of ours, my old watcher. They work with a group of slayers who have magical aptitude. Train them to use magic safely.”

“That sounds nice,” Steve says. 

“It is. Mostly.” 

Steve adjusts his seat on the sofa. Buffy scooches too, crossing her legs under her and facing him.

“So,” she asks, “were you still holding back?”

He looks like he isn’t quite sure how to answer. Maybe he’s scared to hurt her feelings, which is an answer, itself. Then again, she’s pretty sure if they’d both gone all out then someone would’ve ended up injured, at least.

“It’s okay,” she says. “I’m not in on their bet.”

“It wouldn’t be possible to _not_ hold back in that space,” Steve says. 

“Yeah, I was thinking the same,” Buffy admits. “The walls, the equipment, the staircase. It would be easy to destroy it all. Have you ever brought down a building before?” 

Steve shakes his head. Buffy tries to stop herself from imagining what she was doing when she brought a building down, and what kind of damage she and Steve could do together. Not to compare notes, here, but she knows _she’s_ stronger than Spike, and Steve might be stronger than she is. She could really let herself go, and maybe he could too… She forces herself to snap out of it. 

“Let’s just say, it’s not pretty,” she says instead.

“I can imagine.”

She wonders if he can.

“So, big open space next time?” she asks.

He laughs, and it’s easy, relaxed. She wonders how many people get to see that side of him.

“Why, do you have some place in mind?” he asks.

“Easy,” she says. “Parks. Football fields. Cemeteries.” 

“Cemeteries?” Steve asks, looking incredulous.

“I have fought in a lot of cemeteries,” Buffy says, “and not once have I gotten into trouble for property damage.”

“Good to know,” Steve says. “Trust me, when you get into trouble for property damage, it tends to put a damper on things. I still get plenty of angry letters from New Yorkers. People whose homes or offices were destroyed.” 

Buffy raises her eyebrows, a little surprised that he gets letters like that, even if she’s not surprised that he reads his fan mail. “Sounds like they’re big dumb jerks who are failing to recognize that without your help they’d be more worried about whether they made the cut in the afterlife than the details of their insurance policy.”

He shakes his head. “It’s their livelihood, though, or their home. I don’t blame them for being sore about that.” 

She bites the inside of her lip. “You’re nicer than I am.”

“I’m not,” Steve says. “I just see it for what it is. People hurting.”

“Really?" She narrows her eyes at him. "Do you really not hear that? You’re definitely nicer.”

Steve sighs. “I’m just saying, I don’t blame them, but we did the best we could.” 

“Yeah?” Buffy asks. 

“Once the Chitauri started coming in, there wasn’t a lot I could do other than try to contain the damage and the casualties, while the team tried to stop Loki.” He pauses. “Loki was the, uh, ‘Big Bad’ who was responsible.”

“Right,” Buffy says. She knows about this part. “From what I understand, despite your reluctance to call yourself what you are: you’re the leader. The one setting the strategy. Calling the shots. Telling Iron Man who to -- you know. Iron.”

“That’s not really what he--”

She pats his arm. “I know. I’m joking. I’m just saying, you should give yourself more credit. You did more than damage control.”

“I’m not trying to be hard on myself,” he says. “What I mean is, it caused a lot of damage, and a lot of pain to people. I’d rather not see that again.”

She realizes what he means now. The Tarak-ha ‘slicing open reality’ thing, and his worry about the size of the threat. The likelihood of another portal letting angry hordes in to a major city. 

“You won’t,” Buffy says, putting some extra certainty into her voice.

“Maybe I’m being reckless, asking you to take a chance with sending him home instead of slaying him.”

“No,” Buffy says, and leans forward to push back a stray tendril of hair that’s fallen across his forehead. He starts, but then relaxes into it. She smiles. “I get complacent, sometimes. I’m all, ‘kill the evil, save the humans, rah rah.’ I don’t always stop to think about other options. It’s good, having someone to challenge that. Make us remember there are shades of grey.”

When he hazards a glance at her, he looks so vulnerable and tender that she has to stop herself from leaning closer and embracing him. She could forget, around the way he fits so seamlessly into that Captain America persona, that he’s a man who’s younger than she is, who’s lost more than she could imagine. He’s also been doing this for what, four or five years? Maybe? She’s not clear on the details, on how long it was between him getting beefy and him getting frozen, and now how long he’s been back, but it can’t be much longer than that. She’s been doing this kind of thing for much, much longer. 

“Thank you,” he says.

They’re silent for a second, until Willow calls out _“I’m ready!”_ from the other room. 

“Shall we?” Buffy asks. 

“Lead the way,” Steve says.

\--

Steve isn’t sure what to expect, where ‘magic’ is concerned. 

He’s seen Loki and Thor phase in and out of their battlesuits like sand through an hourglass, but that wasn’t so different from the way Tony’s Iron Man suit could find Tony and cocoon him, wherever he happened to be. Steve’s watched Loki blast bright shots of energy from his scepter, but that wasn’t all that different from HYDRA’s weapons. Magic and technology, where the Avengers were concerned, were often easy to confuse -- especially for a man out of time.

This? This is different. 

The chanting in Latin, and the herbs that smell like the thurible from the Mass he’d go to as a boy. It masks the smell of sewer, at least.

He’s next to Buffy, standing at the ready. As much as people _think_ he’s constantly prepared, ready for whatever comes, sure of himself… He’s taking his cue from her right now. 

And she looks fairly relaxed. So he resolves to be the same, assuming a similar posture (legs set a little wide, arms folded). Buffy lets out the occasional yawn, or looks down to smooth her shirt, or shows some other minor sign that she’s bored, not nervous. 

Like the Avengers ( _when they are listening to Steve, anyway)_ , there’s not a lot of chatter permitted as the mission gets underway. And then, Willow finishes her incantation, and with a flash of light (and the ‘pop’ she promised), Eryu appears. 

He seems unsurprised to see them, unfazed by the phasing, which Steve can’t quite understand. To suddenly be somewhere else would have to be disorienting but--

“You can’t stop it!” Eryu says, like before. 

“Wanna bet?” Buffy asks. “Give it another minute.”

Willow chants behind them, at the far end of the recess, while Buffy and Steve stand within it. Eryu blinks, like before, but he doesn’t disappear this time. 

He looks at Willow, then at Steve and Buffy, and lets out a roar.

“Will?” Buffy asks. 

“ _Come,”_ Willow says, her eyes shining and growing darker, and Steve feels the change in her, sees a hint of the power Buffy mentioned. It feels like a shiver down his spine.

The amulet rises off of Eryu’s shoulders, and the demon screams for it, grasping at it, but it flies out of his claw too quickly and into Willow’s outstretched hand. Now, he’s alarmed, and he lunges at them, trying to get to Willow. 

Buffy cuts in front of him, and Eryu attacks, trying to throw her aside. 

“Steve,” Buffy calls over the struggle. “Stay on Willow. Don’t let him get back to the amulet.” 

Then, she twists herself out of Eryu’s grasp and kicks him hard. Steve can hear the thump of it, and Eryu flies until he hits the far wall. Although he falls to the ground, Eryu jumps up again without any hesitation, springing back into the fight. Buffy is landing her punches (Steve knows how hard they sting, now), but it’s like Eryu doesn’t feel it. He manages to pick her up, tossing her down onto the wet ground and then moves around her, unconcerned, towards Willow. 

Steve throws his shield, which knocks Eryu down before it bounces on the ground and returns to him. 

Still, Eryu’s up again, and Steve is ready to jump into the fray, until Buffy grabs at Eryu’s shoulders and wrenches him back, throwing him into the far wall of the recess. She has him boxed in, now, and that’s the upper hand. It’s obvious. When he tries to get out, he may get a hit or two in, might knock her down for a second, but he can’t do much more than that. The fight goes on for several more minutes, but Steve doesn’t have to throw his shield again.

She’s stronger. 

It gives Steve enough time to notice what Willow is doing. The amulet floats in her hand, and she’s speaking, but her voice is too low for him to make out over the noise of the fight. Suddenly the amulet glows bright orange, and as the light in it gets brighter, Eryu notices, letting out a roar that sounds like he’s in agony. It’s enough to make Steve feel sorry for him. 

“ _Silence,”_ Willow says, and though her voice doesn’t seem loud, it’s somehow right in Steve’s ear, and echoing off of the walls. “You and your sovereign will be together.”

She extends her other hand towards Eryu and he begins to float as well. He doesn’t seem like he can move at all, his arms and legs slack, his yell silenced, though his mouth is still open. Something hits Steve low in his gut, bristling at the way Willow has just _stopped_ it all. 

He can’t help but think: _How would you be able to fight that, if you had to?_

Buffy wisely steps back, facing Eryu, until her back hits Steve’s front, and then she finds his hand, giving it a squeeze that reassures him, if only a little. 

“Let the demon and the sovereign join on the other side,” Willow says, her voice still ringing like she’s speaking in his ear. 

Another flash of light, and Eryu and the amulet are gone. 

There’s a long moment of silence, as Willow closes her eyes, breathing deeply. Buffy lets the quiet hang. 

Finally, when Willow opens her eyes, they look normal -- not so dark, not so glassy -- and Buffy releases his hand.

“All good?” Buffy asks Willow. 

“Yeah.” Willow shakes out her hands, then puts them into her pockets. 

Steve’s had friends who are stronger than they look -- in fact, most of them fit that bill. But this is something different. He thinks of Star Wars, which Tony had insisted he watch. (“The _originals,_ not the prequels, Capsicle, don’t mix them up!”) It’s just like that. The force, or maybe the dark side, where Darth Vader could lift people up and choke them without touching them. 

But she wouldn’t want to, Buffy had said. And he trusts Buffy.

They head back the way they came, finding their way to the street. They’d chosen a nearby sewer grate in an cul-de-sac to avoid the crowds in daylight, and parked the car just _so_ to make it harder for anyone to spot them.

He squints at the light as he emerges from the manhole, and almost forgets to extend his hand for Buffy and Willow to follow. The ride back is mostly quiet.

“That went great.” Willow says. “I got him to the right dimension and everything, I’m positive. And there’s no way that amulet has any gas left in the tank for a return trip.”

“Worked like a charm,” Buffy says. 

“Ooh! Worked like an amulet,” Willow adds with a silly grin. 

They fall into silence again, until soon Willow’s parking in front of the slayer HQ. She heads inside, calling dibs on the first post-sewer-shower. Buffy stops in front, looking up at him with a careful and curious stare.

“Steve?” Buffy says. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m fine. That was just... different.”

“Bad different?” she asks. 

“I’ve seen a lot of strange things,” Steve says. “And it’s not any stranger, in some ways.” 

“And in other ways?” 

Steve’s not ready to say, just yet. He’s still thinking, about what he saw and felt, and what it means.

“C’mon,” Buffy says, and instead of walking back up the walkway, turns in the direction of her own apartment. “Let’s get the sewer stink off of us, and then we can talk.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TY to crazygirlne for helping me strategize & giving it a read over before I posted. :)

She knows what that must have looked like. Could see the look on his face, the way he tried and failed to hide his surprise and discomfort at the type of power Willow could wield. 

For one thing: he’s not wrong. Willow once flayed a man alive before Buffy could even hope to stop her. She doesn’t hold that against Willow, but she doesn’t exactly forget it, either. She’s thankful, frequently and explicitly, that Willow is playing for the good guys. 

And for another, two days ago, Steve didn’t know about magic, or vamps, or demons, or any of it. 

Sure, Steve was a guy who had a crazy story of his own -- army experiments, fighting HYDRA, getting frozen for over sixty years just to wake up and help a team of powered people fight an alien sky army?

Yeah, weird.

Weird, but weird by pieces. 

The super soldier thing, that’s just what the government does, if given half a chance, and if memory serves, he volunteered. Hell -- Riley, Forrest, Adam, _all_ of that demon hybrid junk was probably just their reaction to failing on a super soldier re-do. 

The frozen in ice thing is obviously big time weird, but it’s also not quite supernatural. Although, waking up in the future? Yeah, point for Steve on that one.

The alien sky army -- that’s weird, but the whole world had to deal with that weirdness, and maybe it was easier for him to deal when he got to tackle it head on. Buffy knows that _she_ would’ve felt better had she been on the ground instead of stuck, watching on television from a continent away and praying none of her girls were--

She shuts that thought down. 

Anyway. Each of his weirdnesses were weird by pieces, and none of them involved the stuff of horror films and Halloween.

So, really, he’d been taking it all pretty well, other than the Willow-wiggins. 

And she gets it. It’s one thing to know there are forces more powerful than you are, and another to _see_ it.

When they get into her place, he’s doing that thing where he looks uncomfortable, and she’s not sure if it’s more about it being cramped, or about him not used to being in a woman’s space. 

“Sit, Steve, I don’t care about the sewer essence,” she says, poking him as she walks by. He jumps, but then he listens, and finds a seat on her sofa. 

She washes her hands, then grabs two glasses, fixes some ice water, and grabs a big bag of potato chips from her cabinet. She doesn’t keep a lot of food in, living that takeaway lifestyle since she’s only here part-time, but chips (or ‘ _crisps_ ,’ as they’re called here) are a go-to after patrol, so she’s always got them. 

“Scooch,” she says, and he moves over as much as he can, looking midlly concerned as she fits herself into the narrow space he’s left on the loveseat. 

“Drink water, eat chips. Then talk. Or get cleaned up. Whatever.” 

He takes a sip of the water, then puts it down on the coffee table. She pops open the bag of potatoey goodness and holds it out so he can stick his hand in. 

He hesitates. “I’m just gonna--” 

He moves to get up, and she’s worried she’s made him _actually_ uncomfortable, but then she hears him in the kitchen running the sink and realizes that he’s washing hands. Thoughtful _and_ sanitary. 

When he gets back, now it’s his turn to encroach on her space, and he does so with a genuine tentativeness, like she didn’t just throw him over her shoulder and kick him across the room and hold his hand all in the last day. 

But he eats, and that’s a start. 

“She’s really one of the good guys,” Buffy says, once she’s done chewing. “She’s been fighting the good fight almost as long as I have. We’ve all had our bumps in the road, but -- there’s no one I trust more than Willow.” 

“Was I that obvious?” Steve asks. 

She shakes the bag until he takes some more. 

“I feel it too, is all,” Buffy says. “When she channels that -- for me, it’s like whatever she has going on is butting heads with whatever it is that gives me my power.” She pauses. “I know your power doesn't come from the same place. Maybe, it’s just natural for someone who relies a lot on their gut and their strength to feel maximum wiggins at someone whose power can circumvent all of that.”

“Maybe,” Steve says, quiet.

“Did you feel that way with -- y’know. Thor? He’s magical.”

“No. Thor is magical, but not like that,” Steve says, shaking his head. 

“How so?” 

“Thor flies. He has a big hammer that only he can lift. He can make lightning. I mean, that’s magical, but mostly he’s a strong guy who flies, and I know a couple of those. Just now… it felt like she could just -- stop you. With her mind. With Eryu, the way he was frozen. He couldn’t do a thing to stop her. And that was her acting in _mercy_.” 

“I hear you, Steve.” Buffy kicks her feet up on the coffee table, shifting. She can feel her arm smushed up against his. “And, y’know what? The truth is, she can. So we have to be thankful she’s one of the good guys and make sure we stay aware of which bad guys are trying to learn those same skills.”

He shakes his head, then grabs another handful of the proffered chips. “I guess you’re right.” 

“I usually am. Ask around. If it helps, she’s big time powerful. Most people wielding magics are way more _Sabrina_ than _Voldemort_.” 

She pauses, realizing he probably has no way of knowing what she’s talking about. 

“I mean, most are nowhere near as powerful as Willow.”

“I got it by inference,” Steve says. He rubs idly at his arm. “I trust you. And I’m sure I’ll trust her too when I get to know her.”

“I appreciate that, the show of trust. And hey, bright side? We did the day-saving thing, and didn’t slay anyone. That’s gotta count for something right?”

Steve gingerly puts his feet up on her coffee table as well. He doesn’t say anything. It seems like he’s staying extra still. Buffy noisily grabs another handful of chips, chewing slowly. It’s been a long time since she’s been this close to anyone, and it’s nice. She lets herself enjoy it. 

\--

He’s never been covert ops, but Buffy reads him better than most, and it surprises him. It takes some getting used to. After they finish their chips, she gets up, citing the increasingly pressing need to take a shower and rinse the sewer out of her hair. She tells him to stay put, and he does. 

From her tiny little loveseat, he dials Natasha. 

“The amulet’s taken care of,” he says when she picks up. 

“Knew you could do it,” Natasha says. 

“And did you know the rest? Who it belonged to?” Steve suspects she must. From where he stands, there’s so little Natasha doesn’t know.

“There are a lot of types of evil out there.”

That’s a yes.

“More than I realized,” Steve says. 

“When you know more, you can do more. Look out for more people in more ways.” She’s right, but he’s not sure why _now_.

“Was this a learning exercise, then? Trying to teach me what goes bump in the night?”

“Depends,” Natasha says. “What’d you think of her?”

Steve furrows his brow. “Who?”

“The slayer. Buffy. You liked her, right?” 

It takes him a second, but when he realizes what he’s saying it’s like the shoe drops. It takes him a second to find the words.

“This was a setup,” he says, not a question. 

“It was a _mission_ that I thought might go a certain way,” she says. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

“Natasha.”

“Steve,” she says in the same chiding tone. “Answer the question.”

He can hear some rummaging down the hall, and the place is so tiny--

“Yes.”

“Yes? You liked her?”

“Yes.”

“Did I do better this time? Better than Lillian and Kristen?” 

“I can’t believe you--”

“Would multitask a mission and matchmaking?”

“Okay. I can believe that. But the--” He fights the urge to whisper. “The _vampires? Demons_?” 

“You see a lot in our line of work,” Natasha says. “Figured it might come up eventually. Better you know what the threat looks like, and there’s no one better to teach you how to fight them.” 

A question suddenly occurs to him. Natasha’s strength, and her fighting skills— she’s not as strong as Buffy, but Buffy had said she was a step above the others.

“ _You’re_ not a—”

“A slayer? No. But I respect good work when I see it.”

The line goes quiet for a second before she speaks again.

“So, where are you? Still in London?”

It’s rare for a call with Tash to go on this long, but he thinks maybe he has her curiosity piqued. 

“Yes,” he says. “We just finished an hour or so ago. The amulet’s been neutralized.”

“Where in London?” She asks this like it’s a mere curiosity. 

“Near the slayer headquarters,” Steve says. 

“Oh?” Natasha sounds so innocent that he starts to wonder if she has eyes in the sky. Willow may be all powerful in a way that sets his teeth on edge, but Natasha’s omniscience is terrifying in its own way as well. 

“Hey, Steve,” Buffy calls from down the hall. “I’m done. I can’t offer a change of clothes, but the bathroom is yours, if you want it.”

“I need to go,” Steve says. It’s not that he’s worried that Natasha will hear Buffy in the background -- he can take a bit of ribbing. That’s what the team does. But he also needs a moment to sit with this _setup_ revelation before Buffy comes back. 

“I have something else for you, if you want it. Might be a two man job. I’ll text you the details.”

“I want you to know, you’re on my shit list for this,” Steve says, but there’s no heat in it.

“I’ll live. Have fun,” Natasha says, and the line disconnects. 

\--

The text says:

_Former SHIELD tech purchased on black market. Used to disarm small crowds via auditory stimulus. Possibly adapted from Stark tech. Purchased by vamp named Raphael. Older, possibly affiliated with HYDRA. Paris._

Steve reads it, then turns his phone upside down and puts it on the coffee table. A minute later, he flips it over and reads it again, then puts it back into his pocket. He can feel his thoughts threatening to run away with him. 

Buffy re-emerges, hair up in a towel wrap, face bright and dewy and pink. 

“Steve?” she says. “I left you a towel and a washcloth.”

“Thank you. I’ll be quick.” He stands, grabbing the small rucksack he’d brought in from his bike. He always has a clean shirt on him, just in case.

In her (tiny) bathroom, he takes off his shirt, grabbing the clean washcloth she’d left in a little bundle on the counter and giving himself a quick wash at the sink like he used to when his missions with the Commandos didn’t include indoor plumbing. 

Now, with no distractions, his thoughts do run away with him.

He’d have to plan for the auditory component of the weapon. It’s possible the serum will make him resistant or immune, but he can’t count on that. Maybe he’d need to dampen his hearing with earplugs, or maybe he could call Tony and see what other defenses might help.

Buffy would be crucial, of course. She and her team would be able to figure out what the vampire wanted, if anything, other than subdued masses to eat. He could do some research through his channels about whether the vampire was also HYDRA (a slightly disturbing thought, those two worlds meeting). And maybe they could train each other -- she could show him a little more about techniques for fighting vampires, and he could show her how to disarm HYDRA agents.

He drops the dirty flannel into the hamper and throws on his fresh shirt. Focusing on dressing helps to stop him from strategizing.

When he returns to the living room, Buffy’s on the sofa again, sitting there like she’s waiting for him. Her hair is out of the towel, honey brown in loose, damp waves. She’s dressed in some sweatpants, a big sweater, and fluffy white socks. She looks deceptively delicate like this, and he can imagine the girl she was before she started fighting. 

She looks him over. “Squeaky clean?”

“Clean enough.”

“I shudder to think what might pass for ‘clean enough’ for an army guy born in the 1920s.”

“If I smell, feel free to let me know.”

“I tend to approach the smelliness of others with a thorough ‘polite ignoring.’” She smiles at him. He moves to her tiny couch and takes his seat next to her again, facing forward as she aligns herself so she’s facing him. 

“Now what?” she asks. “It’s real early. Hungry for non-snack-like foods?”

The wheels are still turning, about this next threat. It seems presumptuous to assume she’d want to launch right into the next mission, let alone going to Paris with him to do it. Technically, their mission together is over, and she has more reasons to part ways with him now than anything else. She has enough on her plate. Not to mention, she has all the other slayers to worry about. He’s not sure what her obligations look like in London and Rome, or what else might be on her schedule. 

“Steve? You’ve got thinking face,” she says.

“I was telling my teammate that we neutralized the amulet,” he says.

“Which teammate? The green guy?” Buffy asks. 

“Natasha. Black Widow.”

She tilts her head. “That’s an intense alias.”

“Yes. And she’s earned it,” Steve says. 

“I’m guessing she must have, to have that moniker and be the only female Avenger. No offense, but I’ve got several hundred super-powered girls and you only have one, it seems a little—” She pauses. “Wait. Is Black Widow a slayer?”

“She’s not strong the way we are, if that’s what you’re asking. But she knows how to fight.”

“Doing it without super strength?” Buffy asks, shaking her head. “Gotta respect it.”

“She has another mission,” he says, the words seeming to come out of their own volition. 

“Yeah?” It looks like he’s piqued her interest, the way her eyebrows shoot up and she adjusts herself straighter in her seat. “What kind of mission?”

“A vampire who’s got his hands on some dangerous tech.”

“Dangerous how?”

“It’s some sort of SHIELD tech that can disable small crowds using an auditory stimulus.”

“Yikes,” she says. “See, that’s why quasi-government organizations shouldn’t be _developing_ that kind of stuff. It’ll always inevitably fall into the wrong, possibly taloned hands.”

“You and I are in agreement there.”

“What’s the urgency factor?” Buffy asks.

“We don’t have the same sort of deadline on this one as we did with the amulet, that I’m aware of, but this tech is also not something we want to leave in the wrong hands any longer than we have to.”

“I get that.” She has ‘thinking face’ now. “So we research the vamp -- do you have a name?” (He nods.) “And we’d want to learn as much as we can about the tech, how it’s used, how to circumvent it, likely targets for a vamp taking it out on a test drive. And then make with the game plan. And sorry, but this one is likely to include a slaying.”

“There’s one other thing,” Steve says. She’s talking like she’s going to help, but she doesn’t know everything yet.

“Yeah?” 

“The vampire -- his name is Raphael -- and the tech. They’re not here. They’re in Paris.” 

She narrows her eyes, looking away thoughtfully. “I have a few girls in Paris who handle regular patrols, but it’s run-of-the-mill stuff. Not a ton of large threats out of there, usually. That’s where you’re headed next?”

“Think so,” he says.

“Mind if I tag along?” she asks, like he wasn’t dancing around asking her directly for the last five minutes. It’s almost a relief.

“I don’t mind, no. You didn’t have any plans, now that we’re done with—”

“Not till just now,” she says. “That’s the great thing about slayer retirement. I get to choose my own projects.”

Maybe they’ve earned a little rest after dealing with Eryu, but Steve has to fight the urge to get started _right now_ , feels himself picking up the planning where he’d left off in the bathroom. Call Tony for info on the tech, pull intel on HYDRA bases in Paris, obtain secure transit and lodging, there was also the matter of appropriate weapons, especially in this case, and--

He tamps down the thoughts, along with that other feeling, like he’s a little bit nervous somehow, but he’s not sure why. 

“So,” Buffy says. “Where do we start?”


	9. Chapter 9

By the time Steve goes to his hotel, showers, packs a bag, and makes it back to Slayer HQ, he finds the door unlatched and the dining room full. 

Buffy is at one end of the table, Dawn, Willow, and Xander at the other. A pile of books is laid out in front of them, and a phone at the center of the table is on and set to speaker. Steve takes his seat next to Buffy. She smiles when she sees him, a warm sort of thing, and he’s not sure if he manages to smile back before he feels the need to look away. He feels like an intruder. There’s a dynamic in the room that he’s not a part of. It’s something like what he had with the Commandos or what he’s been developing with the Avengers, but no matter how sweetly she smiles, he can still feel that he’s walking into something that he’s not a part of.

“Research party,” Buffy whispers to him. There’s a box of donuts next to her, and she pushes it his way. He takes one, not wanting to be rude, and absently takes a bite. Jelly.

“So he’s sort of like Dracula, with the keeping humans around?” Dawn asks. “Do you know if he has thrall? The Miller volume isn’t super clear.”

“It’s quite possible, given his age,” says the voice over the speakerphone. All this time in England and this is the first person in Buffy’s circle who actually has an English accent, and yet he’s calling from somewhere else. “Though I daresay he’s not known for being as showy as Dracula. If he has a-- a ‘thrall,’ then perhaps it’s better to compare him to Drusilla. Hypnotism to subdue for the kill, not to enlist an ‘emissary’ or seduce a lover.” 

_Dracula is real too?_ Steve doesn’t bother to ask out loud. 

“Ick,” Buffy says, shifting in her seat. “Pass on both of those, please.”

“ _You’re_ saying ick?” Xander asks. “I think _I’ve_ earned the ick, what with being the only one at the table who’s been an emissary bug boy.”

“We can both ick,” Buffy says.

“She’s got a point, Xander,” Dawn says. “Dracula thralled you both in different ways.”

“If you don’t mind?” the voice on the phone continues, cutting them off. “Raphael _is_ known to take human familiars, and he’s known to affiliate himself with both demon and human partnerships when advantageous. But he’s very discreet. He won’t leave you a trail of bodies.”

“Sounds fun,” Buffy says. 

“I think it sounds like a job for Buffy,” Dawn says, voice mildly sarcastic. “Just get in there for three or four years and convince him to get a soul.”

“Dawn,” Buffy says, her voice a warning. “Be nice.”

“Fine,” Dawn says.

Steve watches the look that the two sisters exchange. It’s a well-worn path between them, something that Dawn uses to goad Buffy. But by the way Buffy folds her arms, the way her eyes shoot over to Steve and not Xander or Willow, he can see that it’s not that Buffy’s generally sensitive. It’s that Buffy doesn’t want Dawn doing this in front of _him_. It’s something everyone else is in on. He wonders what the issue is, but pushes it out of mind to ask her about another time. The voice on the phone is still speaking.

“He’s at least two hundred. Maybe three. And unlike some of the other… older… vampires we’ve come across, he’s careful. It might be easy to find him once, based on reputation and how he chooses to live, but it won’t be easy to find him a second time. So plan carefully.”

“Got it,” Buffy says. “I for one think it’ll be nice to meet and slay an older vamp who hasn’t been nicknamed ‘the Scourge’ or ‘the Bloody.’”

“Quite,” says the voice over the phone.

“What about the HYDRA connection? And the tech?” Steve asks, speaking up. “This is, um, Steve. Rogers.”

“Oh! Right.” The voice sounds surprised. “This is Rupert Giles. I’m a, er, friend, of Buffy and the others.”

“Giles was my watcher,” Buffy says to Steve. “He still pinch hits when needed, and he usually knows all about the old vamps. Giles, I told Steve what a watcher is already. And I think he’s used to figuring things out by context, what with the waking-up-in-the-future, so feel free just to give it to us straight.”

“Right,” Rupert-- _Giles_ says. “Well, I’m no expert on HYDRA, until recently they were merely a historical vestige, and not one that heavily intersected with my primary areas of study. But it’s certainly in line with what I know of Raphael that he would partner with such a nefarious human organization. If it -- it were useful to him, to have their allyship. Or if it were profitable. As for whether he’d be interested in using the weaponry, I’m not sure, but I would guess not.”

“He’s after money?” Steve asks. Vampires looking for money felt… cheap, somehow. 

“He likes to live nice,” Dawn says. “Mansions, cars, parties, the whole nine.”

“Classy,” Xander says, then at Dawn’s look says, “I mean, for a vampire.”

“Beats a crypt,” Buffy says. 

“Aww, see,” Willow says, “This is nice.”

Buffy and Dawn turn to her, confusion evident on their faces.

“Not the classy vampire part,” she says. “I mean, we’ve got the donuts, and the inappropriate Xander comments, and Giles telling us about a vampire he studied back in ye old watcher school. It’s like old times.” Willow smiles, and she looks every bit the friendly woman he’d met that morning.

“Old times with the Scoobs. Right,” Xander says, but then he starts, leaning forward in his seat, voice becoming animated. “Guys. If we’re the Scoobies, maybe that means the _Avengers_ are the _Harlem Globetrotters_ and this is just the start of our zany crossover adventure!” 

Steve knows who the Globetrotters are -- they’d been around since he was a boy, even if they’d started out in Chicago and not Harlem. And they do some neat tricks with the basketball. Maybe that’s similar to what the Avengers look like to outsiders. But the rest of that sentence was hopelessly out of context to him. 

“Gotta dial it back again, Xand,” Buffy says.

“Yeah, Xander, you were doing so well,” Dawn says, giving his hand a pat. “Keep trying.”

“Right,” Xander says. “Keeping it cool. Keeping it casual.”

“That’s the spirit,” Buffy says.

“If we could get back to HYDRA?” Giles offers over the speakerphone. “Steve, if Raphael is assisting HYDRA, my guess is that it will be strictly for profit. He prefers keeping off the slayers’ radar. He has no overarching ideology I’m aware of other than maintaining the lifestyle he’s sought out.”

“That’s helpful, thank you,” Steve says, and he means it. Giles seems marginally better at cutting the chatter than the rest of the group.

“So, not a world ender then. That’s nice. He sounds mostly harmless if not for the ‘drinking the blood of the innocent thing,” Willow says brightly, then pauses. “Which is… a big honkin’ ‘if not for,’ don’t get me wrong.”

“Okay,” Buffy says. “So we have an old fancy vamp who likes to party and live it up in plush mansions, potentially with human companions, using money provided by the extra-special-Nazis-that-were-too-evil-to-be-regular-Nazis. Is that basically it?”

“If you insist on boiling it down to its most basic…”

“Giles, we both know that I do,” Buffy says.

“Then, yes.”

“Great.” Buffy says. “Where am I gonna find him?”

“If he’s a ‘fancy ballroom gala’ type of party vamp, then I have a few ideas,” Dawn says. She’s scrolling on her phone as Xander looks over her shoulder. “The Vogue Foundation Gala is tomorrow. First one ever. Kind of a big deal. So if he’s in Paris and likes a fancy party, this is where I’d place my bet.”

“Worth a shot,” Buffy says. “Can I get in?”

“Sure,” Dawn says. “If you’re a celebrity or you have thousands of dollars to donate.”

“Well,” Willow says. “We’ve got the first one covered, if Steve doesn’t mind going.”

“I don’t mind,” Steve says. “But can’t we wait outside and track him as he leaves?”

“That’s the thing,” Dawn says, picking up a yellowing book and pointing at a small, grainy picture. Steve leans in to get a better look. The man in it has long, curly dark hair but it’s hard to make out his facial features. Not exactly enough to get a positive ID. “No current pictures. So Buffy needs to get in there and scope it out.”

“I don’t follow,” Steve says.

“I’ll be able to tell he’s a vampire if I’m close,” Buffy says. “I can feel it.”

“One of her many nifty superpowers,” Willow says, smiling at Buffy.

“Thanks, Will.” Buffy smiles back at her friend, but then her face shifts into a frown of concentration. “As far as getting in, what does that look like? Does Steve just show up at the door and hope they recognize him in a tux instead of his suit?” 

“I suppose. I don’t see any harm in trying,” Giles says. “Steve’s presence shouldn’t, in and of itself, alert Raphael to the fact that anything’s amiss.”

“Can’t you just roll up to the box office and buy a ticket?” Xander asks. 

“Xander,” Dawn says with a wry smile. “It’s sweet how little you know. No. This is an _event_.”

“Your words are kind but your tone hurts like a knife,” Xander replies.

“Well, the ‘Steve crashes the party’ plan sounds okay to me,” Willow says.

“Actually,” Steve says. “We may not have to crash. I have an idea. Let me make a call.”

\--

Steve excuses himself, stepping outside. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, now, which means it’s still early if Tony is on the West Coast, but he figures he can leave a message if he needs to.

They’d gotten better, Tony and Steve, in the months after they’d defeated the Chitauri. For one thing, they’d been perfectly synced on the battlefield. That goes a long way towards getting along all right in Steve’s book. 

And for another, after watching Tony lay himself down on the wire so fearlessly, Steve had begun to realize that Tony wasn’t quite the showboating bully he’d first pinned him as. He was arrogant, yes, but there was something running beneath it sometimes -- as sense of self-deprecation, or maybe even self-loathing -- that ran just as deep. 

And he was thoughtful, too, if you paid attention. He was the first person to offer you a place to live, clothes, upgraded tech, whatever it took for you to feel comfortable, all the while fast-talking you out of the room and insisting it was nothing. _(Don’t thank me, it’s no problem at all, we’re good, now go, I have things to do.)_

Tony was complicated, and more than a little messed up. (He’d be the first to say so.) But they all were. Tony was also someone Steve trusted over basically all others to defend the Earth.

He picks up on the second ring.

“Cap! To what do I owe the pleasure?” Tony asks.

“Hey Tony. Sorry about the early hour.”

“Is it?” He pauses. “Huh. Six AM. Time flies.”

“You’re still up from last night?”

“That doesn’t sound like me,” Tony says, voice dismissive. Steve can picture him in his dirty t-shirt and jeans, in his workshop, surrounded by the hovering blueprints of his latest suit, listening, but just barely. “Where are you calling me from? JARVIS, where’s Steve calling from?”

“Captain Rogers is currently in London,” JARVIS responds, and Steve can hear it through the line. He’s pretty sure Tony can stop that, if he wants, and make it so Steve doesn’t hear Tony’s question or JARVIS’s answer. It’s a small show of trust that Tony lets him hear. It’s a show of trust on Steve’s part that he continues using that StarkTech phone, fully believing Tony when he says no one but him can track it.

“Merry old,” Tony says. “Last I heard, you were in Poland looking for your pal.”

“Needed a break. I’m hunting down displaced SHIELD tech for the time being.”

“Neat. And you thought of me because--”

“This tech seems to be adapted from StarkTech. Some sort of auditory inhibitor that can paralyze small crowds.”

Tony groans. “Those motherfuckers. Who worked on duplicating that? Was it Fury? Cause that thing is _not_ a toy, and I have the arrhythmia to prove it.”

“I’m not sure. But it’s in the wrong hands now, and I’m going to go get it back.”

“Yes. Do that, and then destroy it. Because that thing was a big, big mistake. JARVIS, can you look into the remnants of the SHIELD-slash-HYDRA databases to see if there’s more than one of these things out there? See if they stole any of our other projects while you’re at it. And don’t forget to wipe the design.”

“Certainly. Would you like me to store any project development records on your personal server, so you can reach out to the individuals involved?”

“You know me so well, J, that’s why I love you.”

“The feeling is mutual, sir.” 

“Tony?” Steve asks. “What can you tell me about disabling it, working around it?”

“Disabling it just means giving a good, hulk-like smashing. Don’t hold back. We don’t want to salvage that thing. And as for working around it… there’s the obvious. Earplugs, but 33 NRR only. Industrial strength. You can get those anywhere, but check the label. And you might want to throw on some ear muffs while you’re at it, brings you up to 36. But I can do you one better.”

“How’s that?” Steve asks.

“A counter frequency that will disrupt the resonance of the inhibitor.”

“So, a good sound that counteracts the bad sound?”

“I knew I liked you for more than just your devilish charm and good looks.”

“Tony,” Steve says, voice chiding. Once the edge was off between them, Tony also had the habit of being a bit of a flirt. It took getting used to.

“I’ll upload it to your phone. JARVIS?”

“Uploading frequency 225b, sir.”

“Look in the ‘music’ app. Still use the earplugs, but keep that handy as well. It’s good to have options.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you need help? I’m not in a position to fly there right now myself, I’ve -- I’m taking a break from the suit. But I can send a suit remotely, or -- I’m working on something else, it’s almost as good. I can send a couple of the Iron Legion. They’re in beta testing now.”

“It’s not necessary. I’ve got it handled.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’ll let you know if that changes,” Steve says.

“Right. Okay. Good. What else?”

“I’ve got intel that says the-- person -- who has the device is likely to be at the Vogue Foundation Gala in Paris tomorrow.” Before Tony can interject, he continues. “We don’t think he plans to use it at the Gala. The guy’s name is Raphael, and our sources say he’s likely to sell the tech back to HYDRA. But we need a way in, to track him.”

“Get you on the list for the Vogue Foundation Gala? Done. JARVIS?”

“Securing the reservation,” JARVIS says.

“Um. JARVIS. Can you make sure I have a plus one, please?” Steve asks, clenching his eyes shut as he asks.

“Hold up.” Tony takes the bait. “Sam’s back in Washington and Tash is undercover. Who’s your date? Did you find him?”

“No. I didn’t find him,” Steve says. 

“C’mon. Don’t hold out on me.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Genius, remember? I promise I’ll try my _very_ best to follow.”

Telling Tony about vampires, demons, slayers… He finds he’s hesitant to get into it. It feels different than telling Sam. Maybe it’s because Sam’s the kind of person Steve feels comfortable really sitting down and talking to. He knows that Sam will have his back through it all, no matter how crazy things get. Tony’s got Steve’s trust too, but in a different way. They’re teammates, maybe even friends, but they’re not confidantes.

And, anyway, Buffy and her friends are waiting inside. Steve can be selective about what he shares.

“I tracked down a different artefact this week, and in the process I met someone else who was looking for it too. She also works on keeping dangerous things away from the bad guys. Tash knew her by reputation and vetted her. There’s some overlap between her areas of expertise and mine that make it a good fit for us to go in on this particular mission together.”

There. All true. 

“And what’s her name?”

“Buffy.”

“Buffy,” Tony repeats.

“Right.”

“Not Bucky, but Buffy.”

“Right.”

“Really? Buffy? Like Buffy Sainte-Marie?”

“I don’t know who--”

“A singer. Nevermind, it’s not important. What’s her last name?”

“Summers,” he says, without thinking. She’d shared it on the night they met. It’s one useful aspect of the serum few people keep in mind -- impeccable and eidetic memory. “You want to vet her as well?”

“Doesn’t hurt,” Tony says.

“I trust her.”

“And I trust you. Am I also going to run a search on her? Yes. Immediately. JARVIS?”

“You’re lucky I’m good at multitasking. Compiling search results. Additionally, Captain Rogers and Ms. Summers are now on the list for the Vogue Foundation Gala and I’ve confirmed that there is, indeed, one ‘Raphael’ last name ‘Durand’ on the guest list.”

“Thank you, JARVIS,” Steve says. He hadn’t thought to ask JARVIS to check the list, but that helps. A lot.

“You’re very welcome, Captain.”

“Actually? Wait. Steve has a _date._ Give ‘em the whole nine, JARVIS.”

“Certainly, sir,” JARVIS says. “Captain, I’ve taken the liberty of securing transit and lodging. I’ve also ordered appropriate attire for the event for both you and Ms. Summers, which will be delivered to the Four Seasons Hotel George V, as well as the ear plugs and ear muffs that Sir recommended. I will forward the details to you for review. Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you require anything else.”

Steve’s phone buzzes in his hand. 

“Anything else?” Tony asks.

“Not at this moment,” Steve says.

“All right,” Tony says. “Pepper’s going to be up soon. I’d better go upstairs and pretend I came to bed at a reasonable hour. Let me know if you need anything else.”

“Thank you, Tony. I mean it.”

“It’s nothing. Just destroy that tech and I won’t even send you the bill for the Four Seasons,” Tony says. “And send me a selfie of you and the date.”

Tony disconnects. 

The email from JARVIS shows a reservation for two tickets on the Eurostar, first class, leaving three hours from now. He’s also got a confirmation for a suite at the Four Seasons. Steve takes a moment, resisting the urge to let out a deep sigh. First class isn’t his style, and he feels uncomfortable with Buffy thinking it is. But Tony doesn’t do anything by half-measures. 

Sliding his phone into his pocket, he steps back inside. 

The group is still sitting at the table, though the conference phone is no longer lit up. 

“How’d it go?” Buffy asks, standing as he walks in. She stretches her arms above her head, then behind her back. 

“Good. We’re on the list for the event and our train leaves at five o’clock. I also confirmed that someone named Raphael will be in attendance.”

“You did?” Buffy asks. “He’s gonna be there?”

“My friend was able to check the guest list for us,” Steve says. 

“Your friend,” Xander repeats, then looks like he’s tamping down some follow-up questions. Instead, he says to himself, “Harlem Globetrotters.” 

“Wait. Did you say five o’clock?” Buffy eyes the clock in the corner. “Yipes. I better get packing. Dawn, do you have something black tie I can borrow? I seem to have misplaced all of my gala gowns.”

“Depends,” Dawn says. “Have any six inch heels?”

“Maybe?” Buffy says, like it’s a question.

“It’s taken care of,” Steve says. 

“Smooth.” Xander says. “Steps outside for five minutes, calls a ‘friend,’ and boom, taken care of.”

“Is it?” Buffy asks. “All of it? The clothes, the train? A hotel?”

Steve nods.

“That’s… thanks,” Buffy says, but then she narrows her eyes at him. “I reserve the right to veto the dress.”

“That sounds fair,” Steve says. 

Steve isn’t entirely sure how JARVIS knows which clothes to send, particularly since he hasn’t met Buffy, but he’s come to see that there’s really nothing that the AI can’t do.

They head towards the door, Steve grabbing his bag off the table and saying a quick goodbye to Xander, Willow and Dawn. Steve’s phone buzzes in his pocket as he walks and he pulls it out automatically. It’s a text from Tony.

_Your date is a VAMPIRE SLAYER? Since when are there VAMPIRES._

Again, there is nothing JARVIS can’t figure out. He taps out a quick reply. 

_Yes, and apparently they’ve been around for a while now. Ask Tash. She knows more than I do._

Tony types his reply right away. 

_Of course she does. Have fun. Don’t forget to watch your back. And your NECK._

Steve slides the phone back into his pocket and glances at Buffy, who’s waiting for him by the door.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says.


	10. Chapter 10

Some people would be surprised to know that Buffy has learned, over the years, how to travel light. Those days of hauling a large trunk with her to and from Los Angeles on her summer visits are more than long gone, and not just because she hadn’t talked to her father in almost fifteen years. Plus, there was something about losing almost all of your worldly possessions and riding off into the sunset while leaving the crater of your hometown behind that made it easy to detach from material things. 

So, for a two night trip? She’s backpack gal. 

The Four Seasons George V? Not backpack gal territory.

He’d neglected to mention that part until they were on the train. 

You hear a name like the Four Seasons, and you kind of assume it’s going to be fancy, and that your jeans and your Jansport are going to feel out of place. And they do. The hotel is gorgeous, with the columns and the marble and the fresh flowers on every table.

Other than the carefully withheld-and-then-revealed information about their destination, the train ride had been fast, comfortable, and not too crowded. When they’d arrived, it hadn’t been hard to find avenue George V, and they’d chatted along the way about the time they’d each spent in Paris before. 

The staff had recognized them, and they didn’t even have to check in officially. They’re escorted right up to their suite which overlooks the garden set at the interior of the building. 

As she enters, she drops her backpack near the door, running her hand along the top of a chair. This place is well beyond the reaches of Buffy’s lifestyle at any other time than when she briefly dated a so-called Immortal vampire. She doesn’t mind the ride, likes the experience of something special, to see how the other half live who aren’t spreading themselves thin across two apartments in two countries. And who doesn’t like champagne and freshly baked macarons as a welcome gift?

One thing is clear, though: this is not Steve. 

He’s also got a backpack, so they match in that way, but his mood feels different. She’s come to see that he’s got two sides around her: competent strategic guy, and mildly uncomfortable guy. Right now, he’s somehow exuding both. While she admires the welcome gifts and grand chandelier, he surveys the room quietly, moving through it in one slow lap. She’s pretty sure that he’s making sure that no one else is inside. She gets that, appreciates it even, but that’s never been her game, since her gut tells her when enemies are nearby.

“All good?” she asks.

“Just us,” he replies.

She grabs a macaron off the small table and takes a bite. Pistachio. “Yum. Sweets.”

Craning her neck, she looks from the living area into the bedroom.

“I’m not going to sleep tonight,” he says abruptly.

She swallows her bite. “Okay? It’s only nine.”

“I just mean…” He stops. “I don’t need to sleep every night. And if I do get tired I’ll rest on the sofa.”

“Really wasn’t worried about it,” she says, and he looks relieved. 

She can see a king bed from where she’s standing. _Oh_. That’s why. One bed. Maybe he thought it looked a certain way, bringing her to a five star hotel, one suite, one bed, two of them… 

“Anyway,” she says, wanting to dismiss his concerns, “if we’re both tired we can always do that over-under covers thing. That couch looks a little… antiquey, and we’re both grown ups. We can be grown up about it.”

That makes him look nervous again. 

“We also don’t have to do that,” Buffy says, backtracking. “You not sleeping is fine by me. I’d offer the same, but going without sleep is not really on the list of slayer superpowers.”

He folds his arms, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. She tries to figure out if he looked less comfortable here or in her apartment. He seems so darn self-assured everywhere else. Maybe it was her.

“If it helps,” she says, “I can tell you weren’t the one who chose this place. My guess is you weren’t staying at the Four Seasons in London when I bumped into you?”

He shakes his head.

“Thought so. It screams ‘super rich guy who’s used to rich guy things.’”

Steve breaks into a surprised sounding chuckle. “That’s not a bad characterization.”

“Uh huh,” Buffy says, getting a little distracted by the rest of the suite. “Still, when in Rome -- or Paris. Mind if I take the grand tour?”

He gestures for her to go ahead, and she walks from the parlor into the bedroom. All of the furniture is in that Victorian style. The way she figures it is that there are two types of majorly-upscale: antiquey and ultra-modern. This one’s got the former going on. The bathroom is much the same - gorgeous fixtures, a claw foot tub, double vanities. 

She gets by on much less, doesn’t need it, not at all, but still: she could get used to this.

On the table by the wall, she sees a box of industrial strength earplugs and two pairs of earmuffs -- the kind people wear at construction sites or loud concerts. Steve had explained that it was to guard against the tech, which made sense, except insofar as they’d be prevented from hearing one another while using it. She’d have to brush up on the silent signs and signals she’d learned back in the Initiative days.

In the walk-in closet she finds the component pieces of a tuxedo hanging on one side with a black pair of patent leather shoes, and on the other there are three dresses hanging in clear garment bags. One is red, one is black, and the other is grey. All three are gorgeous. She checks the tags on them and finds they’re the right size (as are the two pairs of strappy heels laying on the floor), and as much as she wants to movie montage it right that moment, she also wants to be courteous to Steve, who’s waiting in the other room and who might not be ready for her to unleash her inner Pretty Woman. 

“How’d they know my size?” Buffy calls from the closet.

“JARVIS,” Steve says, and he’s closer than she expects, standing just outside the doorway to the closet.

“Who-vis?” Buffy asks.

“Tony Stark booked this hotel suite for us,” Steve says. “JARVIS is his -- Tony’s -- helper. He’s an artificial intelligence. He can figure out basically anything.”

“It sounds like you’re saying Tony Stark’s supercomputer figured out my dress size from cyberstalking me.”

“He’s more than a supercomputer,” Steve says, not denying the cyberstalking. “He can think. He has a personality. For the first few days I spent in the tower, I thought he was a man in a room somewhere talking over a loudspeaker.” 

“And JARVIS’s personality includes a flare for ladies’ fashion?” She scrunches her nose. “That also still doesn’t explain how he knows my size.”

Steve keeps his face neutral. “I thought about that. My guess would be through analyzing pictures online, or he may have just hacked some online shopping records and taken it from there.”

“And you say my friends are scary,” Buffy says, shaking her head. 

“That type of AI could absolutely be scary in the wrong hands,” Steve agrees, “but in my experience, JARVIS is anything but.”

“Yeah?” Buffy steps out of the closet, moving over to the high bed and pushing herself up onto it to take a seat. She can tell that Steve is analytical, and cautious despite his bravery. If this AI has earned his trust, that means something.

“He’s helped me a lot, especially in the beginning with the Avengers. I could ask him anything and he’d tell me the answers.” 

“Like what?” Buffy smiles.

“Like… new terms I didn’t understand. Pop culture references. Or letting me know that the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1957 when I asked about tickets.”

“See, that just sounds like Siri to me,” Buffy says.

“It’s…” Steve pauses. “Much more like talking to a real person than talking to Siri.”

“Well, then please thank JARVIS for me.”

“I will,” Steve says with a smile, and it lights up his face. It’s not fair how he can be so darned earnest and cute. 

She hops down off the bed and heads back towards the entrance to grab her bag, ready to pull out her little bag of toiletries and set them up in the en suite. 

“Did you want to try them on?” Steve asks. “The dresses?”

Buffy pauses, thinking it over, then resumes bringing her bag of toiletries into the bathroom. “No, that’s okay. If he’s everything you say he is, they should fit. As long as you and I can blend tomorrow, we’re golden. It can wait.” 

“What would you like to do, then?” Steve asks. 

“Food?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Food sounds good.”

\--

They do the Parisian cafe thing.

Buffy always forgets how all of the chairs face the street in Paris, because French people love to people watch. The hotel is right in the middle of it all -- they can see the Eiffel tower in the distance, the Arc de Triomphe is a couple of blocks away. So it’s easy to find a place to eat, though most of them are crowded even at this late hour. 

She’s rusty on French, hasn’t thought much about it since struggling her way to a B+ junior year, but it’s not that dissimilar from Italian, so she can read the menu fine. Thankfully, she remembers enough of proper pronunciation to order herself a sandwich with a straight face. Steve surprisingly orders his steak frites in well-accented French. From the sound of it, he tells the waiter how he wants the meat cooked, confirms the order, and thanks him as he leaves.

She must have a look of surprise on her face. 

“I have a good memory,” Steve says. “Ever since the serum… languages have come more easily to me.”

“Are you fluent?” Buffy asks.

“No. Conversational, maybe. We took down a few HYDRA bases in France. It helps to know a little bit, when you’re on a mission. And it just stays with me once I hear it.”

“That’s a handy bit of superpower,” she says, looping a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “I took French in high school, but then I mostly forgot it. I’m getting there with Italian, though.”

“Why Rome?” Steve asks. “You left California and went there, right?”

She shrugs. “It sounded glamorous. I’d always wanted to go. And… the weather was a little like California. Maybe a bit hotter, in the summer. But not too rainy.” She stops, looking down at the salt and pepper shakers. “That sounds silly, the weather being why. We also didn’t have great coverage there with the girls, so they needed the help. And then I just stayed.”

He nods, and she meets his eyes. It’s always like she’s got his full attention. Somehow it’s easy to forget what that feels like -- the way the gang is always ping-ponging around. It’s nice, if a bit unsettling. She’s used to distracting people away from things when she chooses.

“You wouldn’t want to go back to the states?” Steve asks.

“I don’t know,” Buffy says. “I’ve thought about it. I was out here for a year when I found out that…” She pauses, wanting to phrase this carefully. “Someone I cared about, who I thought was gone, was not gone. I almost went back then. But they didn’t need me. And then things got crazy, apocalypses popped up, and all of a sudden I’ve been living abroad for over ten years. And anyway, most of my friends are here now.”

She feels self-conscious, getting a little too close to her romantic past, which she’d prefer not to touch with a ten-foot pole. 

She’s seen Spike and Angel both in the years that have gone by. They’ve had the occasional run-in, an apocalypse or two that needed all hands on deck, or needed a vampire ‘champion.’ But when it came to Buffy and the two of them, things never changed. That’s kind of their deal. Somehow having them both in the picture put all three of them into a stalemate. And Angel and Spike had their own thing going in Los Angeles. It was enough to make her jealous, though she wasn’t sure of whom.

To be honest, she’s also not sure how Steve will take the whole vampire exes situation, and she cares about his opinion on that more than she’d like to admit.

Steve seems to sense the shift in her mood, watching her carefully, and she tries to shrug it off. 

“What about you? Do you have a home base?” she asks.

“I grew up in Brooklyn,” Steve says. “When I enlisted, I traveled, doing USO shows, and later shutting down HYDRA bases. We traveled all across Europe. I went down -- into the ice -- in the middle of that. Since waking up, I’ve mostly spent time in New York and Washington.” 

“What brought you to London?” Buffy asks.

“I was in Europe looking for someone the last few months. When that wasn’t working out, I decided to track down some stuff that’s gone missing since SHIELD went down, and that’s what brought me to London and the amulet.”

“You were looking for someone?” Buffy asks. “Another mission?”

“Not quite,” Steve says. He looks like he’s measuring something internally, like she was a second ago. Maybe he’s also deciding how much to share.

Then they’re interrupted, the waiter appearing out of thin air with their food. She shifts in her seat, moving her napkin and silverware to make way for the plate, and mutters a quiet ‘merci’ as he places down the food. 

Steve waits for her to start eating before he takes his first bite. She tries to ignore how adorable that is, how it’s not something that most guys in her world do. They dig in for a moment in silence, and then Steve speaks. 

“What you said, about thinking someone was gone who wasn’t.” He says it like a statement. “Before the serum, I was a sickly fellow, and I didn’t have a lot of friends. But I had one good pal. His name is Bucky.” 

She starts, mishearing him at first, thinking he’d said her name. But then it registers. And this sounds sort of familiar, the whole story of Captain America and his bestest buddy Bucky, but she was never super attentive in history class -- and, anyway, it was better hearing it from the source.

“His full name was James Buchanan Barnes,” he says, probably trying to explain the name confusion, “but he went by Bucky. We were friends since we were little kids. And then we were in the Howling Commandos together, until... He fell. He didn’t make it out. We thought he was dead.” 

He pauses, and she can tell this is tough for him. The moment is too quiet to take another bite of her sandwich.

“And it turns out that he wasn’t dead. He was captured by HYDRA. They… did something to him. Sort of like with me. He’s strong. He’s still young, like me, too. But they did things to his mind. He wasn’t himself. And now…” He trails off. 

Something clicks into place. That day that the helicarrier crashed into SHIELD HQ, the news footage had shown Steve -- decked out as Captain America -- fighting some guy they’d been calling the ‘Winter Soldier.’ Everything had been over so fast, the damage so contained to SHIELD, that she hadn’t even had to worry about her girls on the East Coast. So she’d filed it away into the ‘Other Weirdness’ category that she placed all Avengers-type stuff into. Also known as the ‘Not Her Problem’ file.

“That guy you were fighting in DC, he was your friend?” she asks.

“Once upon a time,” Steve says.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and she means it.

“That’s not why I--” 

“No, I know you’re not telling me this to hear me say that. But I am sorry. And I get it.”

He nods, letting out a small sigh, and then he digs into his meal. She takes a bite too, and they sit in a sad sort of quiet for a few minutes. 

“Thing is,” Steve says when most of his steak frites are gone, “he saved me, at the end. In Washington. He wasn’t the same… but I think he remembers me. And now he’s on his own, and I just want to help him.”

“But he doesn’t want to be found,” she guesses.

“Right,” he says.

“He’ll come to you when he’s ready,” Buffy says, tone brokering no argument.

“You sound sure of yourself.”

“I am. If you guys were as close as you say, and he’s working through some heavy stuff, finding himself again…” She shrugs. “Sooner or later, you’ll be a part of that process.”

“Thanks,” he says. “I hope so.”

“C’mon,” she says, pulling some Euros out of her wallet and leaving them on the table. “Let’s go.”

Steve stands, neatly placing the napkin onto the table, and looking a little confused.

“Where are we--”

“I’m gonna show you how to fight a vampire.”

\--

The cemeteries in Paris haven’t changed. Steve never had much reason to spend any time at Père Lachaise Cemetery, but he’d known it was there. Some of the headstones and mausoleums have death dates from the 19th century, long before he went under the ice. It’s somehow both depressing and comforting. The living have changed, but the dead are still here. 

They make their way down the cobblestone path quickly, headed deeper to where they won’t be seen or heard. 

The cemetery closes early, six o’clock, so it’s empty now at 10:30, but they need to watch out for security guards. Steve also wouldn’t be surprised to stumble upon some teenagers having a beer, but the deeper they get, the more the dense path of headstones gives way to a wider path. At the same time, they lose the light from the distant street, and begin to rely on the moon instead.

“I’m pretty sure we could do a lot of property damage out here,” Steve says, surveying the narrow rows of tombstones. Breakable.

She frowns and he can see the moonlight glinting off the cross she wears around her neck.

“Admittedly, the cemeteries in Europe are packed a little tighter,” Buffy says.

“The cities are older,” Steve says.

“I always assumed it was because of the plague.” Her voice sounds like she might be kidding. “It thins out a bit, the farther in you get. And it’s still in operation, so we may get a live one.” She pauses. “I mean, a dead one.”

“I got it,” Steve says.

They reach a wider pathway near the Tombe de Colette, and she steps in front of him, placing a hand on his shoulder. He stills, and she backs up a few paces. They’re in the center of a quiet, dark stone road, surrounded by an old tomb and headstones on their right and left.

“I’m going to come at you like a vampire. You try to tap me with a closed fist at my heart. That’ll count as ‘staking’ me. You ready?”

Steve nods, but he isn’t sure what to expect. 

She rushes him, and he throws a fist out, imaginary stake aimed at her heart, but he can see that it’s the wrong angle. He clips her in the arm, instead. He adjusts the calculation, knows he won’t make that mistake again, but she’s grabbing at him by his arms, trying to pull him down onto the ground. He resists, and she changes course, wrapping one leg around his and tugging. He starts to fall but he tries to pull her down too. She resists, and as he tries to awkwardly recover his balance, she angles herself to get _closer_ to him. It’s not quite an attack, it’s--

She turns her body towards him, and he hesitates, not sure what she’s doing. She’s so close to him, close enough to lean in and-- 

She taps him in the neck with two fingers. 

Oh.

He releases her. She steps back.

“I’m not trying to win the fight,” she says. “I’m trying to find my angle and eat my dinner. That’s it. You need to find your angle before I find mine.”

He gets it now. 

“Let’s go again,” he says.

She smiles, and rushes him again.

This time, he focuses on blocking her. He can see it -- she’s not trying to show off her strength, to launch him across the clearing. She’s not using any of the moves she did the day before. No big kicks, no back flips. She’s just trying to tag him. That’s it.

This time, he finds a grip on her shoulder, pulls her back, and taps her in the chest with his closed fist. 

“Good,” she says. “Didn’t even have to tell you which side the heart is on.”

“Pledge of allegiance,” he says.

She laughs. “Figures.”

“Again?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

They do it again -- once, twice, three times -- he loses count. Now he has the hang of it, and even when she tries to move away, he finds a way to pull her towards him again and tag her right over the heart. The point isn’t to incapacitate. It’s to get close enough for the hit.

“Don’t forget the back,” Buffy says. “It works just as well. Try that.”

He nods, launching towards her and landing a punch that she blocks, though he can see the effort it takes for her to stand her ground. Then, he sends her sprawling with a kick, so lost in the exercise that he only barely softens his blow. He’s about to check if she’s okay when she sweeps her legs under him and sends him down as well. She’s grappling for him, trying to find her angle, and as she turns towards him he sees the opening -- he tags her with a closed fist on the left side of her back. She smiles, stopping immediately.

“Good,” she says, standing and dusting off her jeans. He does the same, watching slyly to see if she might be hurt from his kick. She doesn’t show any signs of it. 

“They’ll be weaker than you,” she says. “Even an older vampire like Raphael. Most of them will be easier than this. But I think you’ve got it.” 

“It was a good lesson,” he says.

“Thanks. I’ve had some practice,” she says. “I was thinking: I’m not sure what the risk factor is, with getting bit. With the girls, we treat it like getting bit means game over. Avoid at all costs. But with you... This is gonna sound weird, but do you know how much blood you can comfortably lose?”

He thinks for a second. “Not exactly. But I was shot -- Bucky shot me. And I kept going. I didn’t even think about it until later.”

“I’m guessing even if you get bit, you’ll be alright, if you can get the vampire off of you quickly.” She looks him over for a beat, considering. “Do you wanna see about fighting a real one?”

He finds himself nodding.

\--

They go to a newer part of the cemetery, one that’s still in active use. 

“One of the things you might not guess about the glamorous life of a slayer is that a lot of it is sitting and waiting in cemeteries,” she says. 

“How do you know that one of these will be a vampire?” he asks, gesturing to the fresh graves.

“We’ve got a system,” she says. “We screen for suspicious deaths. Anything involving a neck wound, or where the corpse is drained of blood. Willow set it up. It uses your geodata and flags who the person is, where they’ll be buried. And I can mark that I’m going to be the one taking care of it. We can’t anticipate all of them, and not every flag turns out to be a vampire, but it’s been a big help.”

“It uses magic?” Steve asks. 

“No,” Buffy says. “Just computer stuff. Cross-referencing news stories, obituaries, cemetery data, that sort of thing. Will’s kind of a brainiac with that stuff. I bet she’d love to get her hands on your friend’s AI.” She pauses. “In a nerdy way, I mean.”

It sounds impressive. Sounds like something Tony would design, if he lived in this world. He can see the connection. But at the same time, they’re standing and waiting over a fresh grave. It’s impressive, but also horrific.

“So one of these will be…” He gestures to the two fresh graves. 

“Alexandre.” She points. “That one.”

“I see.” 

“You don’t have to do it,” she says, extending her hand to him. She’s holding a stake. “But just in case.”

He takes it.

It’s not long before her prediction starts to come true -- the soil begins to rumble, and Steve watches, unable to look away, as first one hand, then another grabs at the earth. A man pulls himself up, breaking free from the grave, only his face has the same ridges as the other vampires Steve’s seen. 

He waits until the vampire -- Alexandre -- is all the way out. Steve finds he has to wait, has to be sure that the vampire will attack.

He does. But it’s clumsy, snarling, muttering thickly in French about the smell of their blood. Steve can’t help but feel sorry -- it’s like a corpse that’s been possessed, that can’t do anything but attack. Buffy looks at him, a question in her eyes.

“I’ve got it,” he says. 

He blocks a few hits, evades a grab at his shoulders. It’s different, fighting this vampire, who’s nearly as tall as Steve, but not nearly as strong as Buffy. It doesn’t take long before he finds the angle, and this time instead of his closed fist, it’s a real stake.

The vampire explodes into ash. 

Steve doesn’t quite avoid that part -- it hits his eyes, goes up his nose. He coughs, wiping at his face. Buffy lays a hand on his arm, and when he opens his eyes he sees the concern on her face. 

“I’m okay,” he says. “I’ll admit, that part wasn’t pleasant.”

“Happens to me all the time,” she says. “Gotta pay attention to which way the wind is blowing. I should’ve said so.”

It’s a good point, and one he hadn’t thought of before, even though he’d seen the way they turned to dust.

“That’s the only one here for tonight, and I’m kinda beat,” she says. “Ready to go?”

\--

Back at the hotel, Buffy insists that Steve take the bathroom first. After all, his hair still has a sprinkling of grey in it. He showers, and Buffy sits in the parlor, wanting to give him privacy so he can change when he’s done. 

After he’s cleaned up, he’s true to his word about their sleeping arrangements. He very politely insists that she take the bedroom and tells her that he’s going to be reading in the parlor if she needs him.

She leaves the door open a tiny crack, then takes a nice, hot shower herself, changes into jammies, and climbs into the large, soft bed. 

It’s been a strange couple of days.

As much as a vampire selling dangerous weapons to HYDRA sounds like a pretty big Problem (Capital P), she’s also… kind of happy. There’s something about the way that Steve can seamlessly jump into her world, the way he listens, the way he thinks, the way she can’t help but relate to his story... the way he’s taken it all in stride. She’s happy they had a second mission. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye after the first.

It’s hard to know what to make of that.

Okay. That’s a lie. It’s easy to know what to make of it.

In fact, it was classic Buffy to fight a few vampires with a nice, cute powered guy and start thinking about doodling hearts in her notebook. 

Some things never change.

But now what?

She puts the thought out of her mind. For now, the important thing was to stop Raphael.

And if tomorrow’s mission happened to include a mandate to party down in formal wear with a cute boy, that was okay too.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TY to crazygirlne for reading this bad boy over before I posted. :)

Buffy sleeps in. It’s glorious.

She’s got that confused, foggy, disoriented feeling when she wakes up. What time is it, and whose bed is this, and where is she exactly--

Then it all comes back, and she sits up, wondering how long she’s been out.

She checks her phone. It’s almost noon. 

Padding out of bed, she takes a quick stop in the ensuite before making her way into the parlor. Steve is there, reading a newspaper. His face is a little pink, and he’s dressed in a pair of sweats and an inordinately tight t-shirt that makes her look away. It looks like maybe he’s been exercising.

“Morning,” he says, and greets her with a smile that hits her right in the gut. 

She’s a goner. Definitely.

“Morning,” she says, though the time of day just barely qualifies. “Sorry I slept so long. I mean, it’s kind of my thing, and I will most definitely do it again, but still.”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” he says.

“Did you go out?”

“Went for a run. The light was beautiful this morning.” She wonders how many miles it takes for him to actually look like he’s worked out. Based on the way he’d shown no real signs of exertion during their sparring, it must be a lot.

“Ah. Running,” she says, tone musing. “I’ve always preferred to rest on my laurels and assume the slaying will keep me in shape. It’s worked so far.” She sits down at the table next to him, grabbing one of yesterday’s macarons and taking a bite. 

“I had asthma before the serum,” Steve says. “I could barely go for a brisk walk. Running feels good to me now.”

“Okay. Valid,” she says, taking another bite of the macaron. She gets up, finding a small coffee maker on the counter and examining the options. “Do you want a cup?”

He shakes his head.

When her coffee is ready, she sits down at the table, sipping slowly and watching it steam. He’s still tuned into the paper. It feels kind of homey, enjoying some very necessary caffeine while he reads the paper. It’s peaceful.

And maybe that’s what it is about him that throws her off -- the level of concentration he applies to everything around him. Also, no phone. Buffy was less attached to her phone than Dawn or Willow, but most people now always had it nearby, face up. Constant interruptions.

As far as she could tell, Steve was adjusting remarkably well to the twenty-first century, but he hadn’t picked up that habit just yet. 

“Anything of note?” she asks, gesturing towards the paper.

“Nothing we need to worry about,” Steve says, folding the paper and laying it down on the table. “I’m going to get cleaned up, if that’s all right?” 

“Please,” Buffy says. “I didn’t mean to keep you away from the bathroom all morning.”

“You didn’t,” Steve says, simply, with a smile. 

There was definitely something nice about waking up to Steve. And this morning, he was calmer than she’d seen him. It was so different than the time they’d spent in close quarters so far, where he’d seemed awkward, like the space wasn’t enough for the both of them.

Maybe he was starting to get comfortable around her.

\--

He grabbed at his tie, adjusting it in the mirror. No matter how many of these events Steve went to, he was never quite comfortable in a tuxedo.

Nevermind that the rest of the afternoon had been unusually relaxed -- watching television, ordering room service, and reviewing the research about Raphael and the tech. 

Starting the morning with a long run had taken the edge off of some of his nervousness about their accommodations, and once that was gone he’d realized that it actually felt kind of nice, having some company. 

The tux? Not so nice.

He’s fiddling with a stubborn bit of hair at his forehead when Buffy walks into the ensuite. She’s in red again. It’s truly her color. It’s a long gown, which trails along the floor even as she pads around the bathroom on her tiptoes. It covers one shoulder but leaves the other bare, and there’s a detail in the back, where the open, deep plummet is complemented by a bow tied near her shoulder blade. 

She’s stunning. Plus, there’s something so intimate in watching her get ready that he has to remind himself not to stare.

She smiles at him, taking her place at the other vanity, and plugging something small and cylindrical in. He’s not sure exactly what it is until she starts curling the ends of her hair. His mother had used hair rollers when she’d had occasion, not a hot iron, which was a new invention when he was a child, and which he recalled more in the shape of scissors. 

Her eyes move from her own reflection over to his, and he meets her gaze through the mirror. She’s caught him staring.

“Did you need some help with your hair?” she asks.

He clears his throat. “No. Thanks.”

After another moment of fiddling with it, while trying to ignore Buffy in his peripheral vision, he gives up. He leaves her in the ensuite, grabbing his socks and shoes.

The sun is starting to go down now. Time to go.

\--

It really is an _event_. Steve’s been to quite a few of these now -- charity galas to support the reconstruction in New York, benefits to honor the Avengers. They’d even been given the key to the city. Well, everyone other than Thor, who had been offworld by the time an event like that could be pulled together.

Every time he’s at an event like this, Steve can’t help but think of the USO shows he used to do, which, until he woke up from the ice, were the pinnacle of his obligations to _be somewhere and do something for a crowd_. And there were some similarities.

For one thing, he has to get into character. 

Back then, it was Captain America, the star-spangled man with a plan. It was an act, even a joke, at times. 

Now, it was Captain America, the superhero. 

It was the same, in that it wasn’t really _him_ , but different, too. On the one hand, the pressure was higher now. When people greeted him, sometimes they had stories of things he’d done right -- or wrong -- and it mattered, that he listened. 

On the other hand, knowing it mattered made it easier to be friendly, to answer questions, to be gracious. 

Another difference? At any event -- really, at any time or place, now, not just at events -- he was always ready for something to go wrong. Back then, he’d punch Hitler, and that was that. Now, he had to worry about what it meant for too many Avengers to gather in one place. Were they a target? Were they actually making people less safe?

One thing that’s nice about _this_ event is that it’s not for him. 

They make their way past the attendant who verifies their name is on the list. This, too, is different than what he’s used to. At the charity benefits, he has to arrive hours before to meet with key donors, and he usually spends all of dinner going around to each table to give his thanks. He _is_ thankful, tells them so genuinely, but there’s a constant sense of being handled that never sits quite right with him.

Here, they just walk right in.

Of course, that doesn’t stop the clamor as he and Buffy make their way past the red carpet. A photographer recognizes him, calls him by name, tells Steve to _walk it,_ not walk by it, but Steve shakes his head no and thanks him. The photographer snaps his picture as they walk by anyway.

Buffy looks a little starry-eyed, her gaze jumping from the carpet to the cameras to some of the others who are walking down it. Steve doesn’t recognize them, but Buffy seems to. 

“Okay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says. “Just haven’t seen this in real life before. Do you need to--?” She indicates the carpet with a nod of her head.

“No,” he says. “Thankfully not.”

She’s still looking behind her as they pass, so on instinct he places a hand at the small of her back, guiding her towards the main entrance. It’s only as his hand touches bare skin that he realizes how presumptuous this might seem -- she knows how to walk. And she probably has a better-than-human sense of which way she’s going even when her stare is directed elsewhere. But she doesn’t start or shoot him an angry glare. It does pull her out of her reverie and she smiles, facing forward and leaving the sight of the red carpet behind.

Inside, the experience is different too. 

No one is looking for him, no one introducing him as _Captain America_ instead of Steve. At one gala, he’d greeted so many people that they all started to blur together despite his eidetic memory.

Here, they’re free to grab a drink. 

It’s a large, semicircular space. He remembers seeing the Palais Galliera during the war, knew it was old, but the intricate columns along the perimeter remind him of Roman architecture. The columns overlook the center of the space almost like a balcony. It’s a step down through a grand arch to the center of the semicircle, where there is a small dance floor and tables set with plates for the dinner. They’re empty for now, the plates and the tables and the dance floor. 

At the bar, Buffy grabs a glass of white wine and Steve orders a beer, just so he has something to hold. She tugs at his hand with her free one and they find a place to stand against a column, surveying the crowd.

“How will you know?” Steve asks. 

“It’s like a pull,” she says, then quirks an eyebrow. “Y’know, the first time I felt it, I thought it was cramps.”

It doesn’t sound pleasant. “You’ll be able to tell who? Not just that he’s here in the crowd?” 

“Yes,” she says. “There’s something about it that’s, I don’t know. Like a homing beacon maybe? It’s taken practice. But yes.”

There’s a lull, and Steve focuses on the sound of the music. There’s a piano somewhere nearby.

“Sometimes you can tell just by looking,” Buffy says, like she’s thinking out loud. “Vamps tend to dress _way_ passé.”

“Not that interested in keeping with the trends?” Steve asks conversationally. 

“Not so much,” Buffy says, then takes a sip of her wine and looks at him. “I don’t get it though. You’re from way-back-when and you look really good…” She trails off, and he feels his cheeks warm. Hers get a little pink too. “I didn’t mean -- I just meant, what’s their excuse?” 

“They’re evil?” Steve says, a question.

She shrugs, releasing the tension with the quirk of her shoulders. “True. Plus, no reflection.”

“Is that right?”

“Cross my heart.”

“Look,” Steve says, and nods. On the opposite side of the room, set at the far wall, is a large mirror, reflecting back a couple of the tables. 

“Oooh,” Buffy says. “He’ll need to stay on this side, then.”

“Maybe he’ll stay up here. Dinner’s no use to him anyway, right?” Steve asks.

“Actually,” Buffy says, tone speculative, “I’ve known some vamps who like human food.”

Steve’s not sure what to make of that. She’s talked at length about vampires being evil, but hasn’t exactly made it seem like she’s _known them_ well enough to report back on their food preferences. 

“Oh!” She sucks in a breath, and grabs at his hand. He follows her stare. 

There’s a tall, slim man with short, dark hair, slightly curled at the ends. He’s dressed in a finely tailored suit and blends in easily with the crowd of socialites. Presently, he’s greeting a young woman with a kiss to each cheek.

“That’s him?” Steve asks. He doesn’t exactly resemble the yellowing picture Dawn had shown them, but he doesn’t not resemble it either. 

“Definitely,” Buffy says. “Unless another vamp turns up? That’s our guy.”

Steve can’t help but be struck by the contrast with the vampire he’d slain the night before. Raphael looks like a man. There’s no snarling, no yellow eyes, no ridges along the forehead. Even the vampires he’d seen in the sewer, they’d been quick to file into formation and attack, their faces changing into hideous, fanged snarls.

Where those vampires had been monstrous, Raphael looks refined. 

It’s hard to reconcile those two pictures in his mind. 

“He’s different,” Steve says, instead. 

“He’s old,” Buffy says. “When a newborn wakes up, it’s all bloodlust. That’s why it’s a good time to find them. They’re too consumed with it to fight well. They’re also incredibly dangerous. They’ll kill the first person they see, if that person isn’t a slayer.”

“If they can learn to be--” Steve’s not quite sure what to call it. “--like this, why can’t they--?”

She seems to understand what he means. 

“They have the capacity to learn,” Buffy says. “But I’ve never met a vampire who has the capacity to be good. Not on their own. They _like_ the kill. They may enjoy living in our world, may learn to do it convincingly, but it doesn’t change it that, to them, we’re happy meals on legs.”

He frowns. It’s not that the morals of it don’t sit right with Steve. He gets it. The public welfare is more important. 

It’s that this feels like a problem someone should be able to fix. He watches Raphael and that gnaws at him.

“There was this program,” Buffy says, “called the Initiative. Military. Their motives were bad, in the end, but one thing they did was put these, um, chips into vampires. Made it so they couldn’t hurt any living person. It kinda worked.”

Steve watches her, sensing she’s going to continue speaking. 

“The thing is, the technicalities of it. The vampires who got chipped couldn’t so much as _try_ to hurt a human without a bigtime pain in the noggin. And that’s good. But on a wider scale… It’s the other things they can do. Like...”

He remembers her words from the other night. _Having their friend kill twice as many people so they can feed too._

“...Everything else. Maybe they set fire to a hospital to get at the blood bank and laugh about the roasted sickies. Maybe they go where the violence is and prey on the already wounded. Maybe they just buy a gun, and deal with the headache.” She looks off into the distance, like she’s remembering something.

“Do I sound like I’m making excuses?” she asks, finally. 

“You sound like you’ve been trying your best to do the right thing for a long time, and it’s helped a lot of people.”

“That’s not a no.”

“How about this: I think if there were a better way to do it, you and your friends would be in the best position to find out.”

“I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve thought about it before but… you’ve had me thinking again.” 

He looks at her, the way her eyes glitter in the soft light. She’s watching Raphael, who’s mixing with the crowd, staying far from the side of the room with the mirror.

“What do you mean?” Steve asks. 

She takes a deep breath, lets it out. “I’ve known two good vampires. I’ve been thinking about what it means. If it means anything about whether vampires can be good.”

She sips her wine again.

“The thing about it is the soul.” Her tone is nonchalant, like casually mentioning the existence of the soul is everyday fare for her. 

“The soul?”

“Yeah. Come to think of it, we never talked about how a vampire is made. They drain a human of their blood, but before the human dies the vampire feeds them some of _their_ blood. And when the new vampire wakes up, it’s a demon that’s taken up shop in that body. The human’s soul is gone. They have the human’s memories, some of their personality traits, but not the soul.”

This, like the fresh grave yesterday, is horrific. 

Steve had grown up Catholic, but it was a subtle stitching in the fabric of his life, something he could forget about for long stretches of time. The idea of an immortal soul, while a given during those long, Latin masses, now feels far away to him, like a child’s fairytale. The thought of that soul being ousted by a demon -- it was the stuff of the church, in a way, but also the stuff of nightmares. 

“I know one vampire who was cursed, more than a hundred years after he was changed,” Buffy says. “He killed the wrong person, and they avenged her by using magic to give him back his soul. He had all the memories of the things he’d done when the demon was in charge, but suddenly he _cared_. And -- y’know. Cue the wallowing. But eventually he decided to dedicate himself to fighting the good fight.” 

She lets out a chuckle that’s devoid of any real amusement. 

“That sounds like a happy ending. I should mention, he’s lost the soul again here and there as well. Big time evil relapse when it’s gone. And even when he _has_ it--” She stops, like she’s thinking of something else she’s not ready to get into. “There are shades of grey, let’s say.”

“And the other one?” Steve asks. 

Now he’s watching Raphael, who’s laughing with the young woman. She’s clinging to his arm as they chat with another couple, looking at ease and very human together. Except, Steve doesn’t fail to notice that she’s in a high-necked gown.

“He also has a soul. But he had a chip, first. The kind I was talking about. He stopped killing, because of that. And once he’d been forced to stop killing, he… he found reasons to want to be good. He sought out his soul.”

“The demon did?”

“I don’t even think of it like he was ‘the demon’--” She stops. “But yes. I haven’t met another vampire like him.” She drains the rest of her wine, clenches the empty glass. “He’s different. I mean, yeah, he had to be neutered to start realizing he wanted to try to be good, and his reasons for being good were _beyond_ selfish. But I’ve thought about it. What it meant, that he could get to that point, where he wanted to understand how to be good. Like, did he develop a conscience? And… I’m not sure. Maybe he did. He understood right and wrong, knew how to choose right, even if he didn't inherently care. And… They forced the chip on him, but no one forced his soul on him.”

Something hits him as familiar as she tells the story. It’s that other thing, that Dawn had been needling Buffy about. 

_“Just get in there for three or four years and convince him to get a soul.”_

Once the thought occurred to him, her tone, posture, the way she told the story… it all coalesced into what his gut told him: _Buffy_ had been the reason that vampire had wanted to be good. 

“Mind you, I haven’t thought of a solution here,” she says. “Not sure there is one.”

Steve is quiet. He’s not sure either. If there’s a small chance that one vampire out of every hundred, every thousand -- whatever it is -- has the capacity for good, is it worth it to change anything? To help them up out of the grave, explain the rules, and give them a chance? 

Or is the collateral damage likely to be too high?

Tough question. Not his to answer, not really.

“Crap, where’d he go?” Buffy looks around and Steve doesn’t see him either. Raphael may be nowhere to be seen, but his companion is seated at a nearly-full table, smiling with friends. “They have super-hearing, but I didn’t think it would be an issue, this far away and with such a full room. Did he leave?”

“Bathroom maybe?” Steve asks. 

“They don’t really--” She pauses. “Unless it’s to keep up appearances.”

“I can check.” 

“Okay. I’ll keep watch here.”

“Can I bring you back another glass?” he asks. 

Her face softens and she smiles, like she’s surprised to hear him ask. “Yes. Thank you.”

Steve gently extracts her empty wine glass from her hand and makes his way to the restroom, dropping that and the beer bottle on a tray for dirties. 

Raphael isn’t in there. 

Steve is waiting for the glass of wine at the bar when he hears a timid, “ _Captain America?_ ” 

Turning, he finds two young women, watching him like they’re hopeful -- but not sure -- of what he will say. It’s an expression he’s come to recognize. 

“You can call me Steve,” he says, with a smile, and extends his hand.

\--

As she waits for Steve, idly looking for Raphael in the crowd, Buffy mentally maps the difference between a date and a mission.

Big Bad? Check in the ‘mission’ column.

Cocktails and formalwear? Check in the ‘date’ column. 

But then, Homecoming, Prom -- every formal occasion she’d had reason to attend, which were few and far between -- usually involved vampires as well. So formalwear didn’t mean it wasn’t a mission.

Then again, vampires didn’t mean it _wasn’t_ a date. Hell, sometimes the vampire was her date.

Next, she’s puzzling out where the boundary might be for Steve, between polite and _interested_ (he is flawlessly polite, so that made it much harder to tell) when she feels a hand at her shoulder. 

It registers instantly. _Not Steve_. 

She barely resists the instinct to grab the hand and twist (not here, not with this crowd around) as she looks up and makes eye contact with Raphael. Up close, she notices his neat, deliberately tousled hair with a hint of curl at the end (he can’t have styled it himself, not with no mirror). He has clear olive skin and deep brown eyes, and his bone structure could rival Spike’s. 

She could easily mistake him for any of the models wandering around in designer suits.

He shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on her. 

Now, she can feel the buzz of him again, up close where it thrums deep down in her gut and in the space behind her eyes. She breaks her gaze away, reminding herself about the potential for thrall. 

“I couldn’t help but ask myself, what a slayer -- not just any slayer, but _the_ slayer -- is doing in Paris, on the arm of one of the Avengers.” His voice is soft in her ear, a gentle deep purr with a hint of a French accent. It hums through her. “I thought you might be looking for me. So, I thought, why not come over and ask.” 

She isn’t sure what to say yet. She hadn’t been expecting him to recognize her, to have the upper hand. Giles had said if they were discovered, once, they’d never find him again. So maybe this was her only chance for answers. Then again, she’s bound by the rules of human decency. To not make a scene. To not out herself. Is he? Or would he snap her neck where she stands?

And where was Steve?

She pushes the thoughts away, and pulls to the front of her mind the mantle of ‘ _slayer comma the’_ that keeps her strong, keeps her focused. This party may be out of her comfort zone, but she’s slain worse vamps than Raphael. 

“As a matter of fact,” she says, “Steve and I have a couple of questions for you, and then we’ll get back to the party.”

“As a matter of fact,” Raphael says in the same tone, “your date is busy.” He indicates the bar with a nod of his head. Vaguely, Buffy can see Steve’s broad shoulders, the back of his head, as two pretty girls talk to him. “But you and I can talk alone. Better that way, hm?” 

He indicates the dance floor, down by the tables farthest from the mirror, with a nod of his head. 

“A dance for your questions,” he says. “What do you say?”

She watches Steve, whose back is still to them. No other vamps here. No other danger. He’ll be fine, and he can handle himself anyway. 

She nods. 

Raphael takes her hand without any hesitation and leads her towards the dance floor.


	12. Chapter 12

They’re making a lazy circuit around the dance floor. His hands are at her waist, hers at his shoulders. Although the skin at her back is bare, she feels warm, and his hands don’t have the chill she expects. 

They must look like any other couple on the dance floor, but they’re not. Her posture is tense, arms rigid. She’s ready to turn the embrace into an attack if she needs to, but he seems utterly at ease.

“How did you know who I am?” Buffy asks.

“Oh, your picture’s in our Vampire Weekly newsletter,” Raphael says, flashing her a smile.

Is that — is he serious? The confusion on her face must show. 

“I’m joking.” 

“Yeah? I wasn’t.” 

“All right. Here’s how I knew. I could sense you before I even walked into the building. And then I saw your name on the list. We may not have a newsletter, but we know the Source by name. In some circles, we knew you by name before too.” He barely waits a beat. “Why are you here? Not for me. Not directly.”

She chews on the inside of her lip, debating whether to just come out with it. Now may be her only chance. 

“Got a tip. You have some SHIELD tech.”

“You’ll need to be more specific.”

“Why am I not feeling reassured by that?”

He shrugs. He doesn’t seem to care whether this bothers her.

“It’s a device that uses a sound to paralyze.”

“Ah,” Raphael says. “The StarkTech.”

“Do you have it?”

“You know, you should tell your date that he wouldn’t have to spend his time and energy tracking down these sorts of things if his friend would stop creating dangerous weapons.”

His words remind her to look back at Steve. He’s still talking to the women, but he’s positioned himself now so he can see out into the venue. As their eyes meet, his flash with concern, but she keeps her expression calm and measured and she lifts a finger at him in a signal to wait. He nods, then shifts his attention back to the women, though she can see from the way he’s holding himself that his focus is really still on her.

“I’m beginning to think you don’t want to cooperate,” Buffy says. “The deal was a dance for answers. Pay up.”

“You’re not a patient one, are you?” Raphael 

She fights the urge to curl her fingers into fists. She’s not used to playing nice anymore. She’s done it before, but the vampires that warrant a civil conversation have usually earned that privilege with time. She wants to take this outside, slam Raphael up against the stone wall, force him to give her answers. He evaluates her, turns her on the dance floor. 

She knows he can tell.

“HYDRA has it already,” Raphael says, his voice a careless thing. 

“Who did you sell it to?”

“It was purchased on behalf of Baron Von Strucker.”

“Where is it now?”

“You tell me something, first.”

“This isn’t a negotiation,” she says, slowing her breathing to keep her impatience at check. 

“Isn’t it though? I can walk out of here right now.”

“The only thing keeping you _unstaked_ is this party so I’m not sure that walking out is the chip you wanna play.”

He laughs. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had the chance to talk to a slayer. You’re so full of zest.”

“Yep! I’m just like a lemon, or a bar of soap, or whatever. More importantly, though: I’ll ask you again. Where’s the tech now?”

“Buffy.” (She flinches as he calls her by name.) “The thing that is keeping me _unstaked_ is my staying marvelously out of your way, which I can and will do again very soon. You’re a novelty to me, so I decided to come inside and see you. But if I wanted to--”

He’s suddenly gone from her arms, with that extra _zip_ vamps reserve for special occasions, but then she feels him behind her, twirling her, disguising the maneuver from the party-goers. When they’re facing each other again, she pulls away by a step, unwilling to move back into his arms. 

“Aw, come on,” Raphael says, his voice slightly petulant. “I only meant to demonstrate--”

She has a small pencil attached to her leg with a few pieces of tape. Just a silly, makeshift something she fashioned especially for this occasion, since she didn’t have a clutch. It wouldn’t be ideal, but she could probably get to it without flashing the crowd. Maybe she hadn’t gotten everything they needed, but the info she had was enough, and the way he was threatening to disappear--

“They’re underground,” Raphael says suddenly. “HYDRA. Literally. At the Parc Naturel Régional de la Haute Vallée de Chevreuse.” 

His voice is velvety when he speaks French and Buffy kind of hates him for it. He reminds her of the Immortal, with his plush lifestyle and infuriating assuredness. Another man (vampire) only out for himself.

“What was it you wanted to know?” Buffy asks begrudgingly. 

“You’re the one who initiated the change. Why?” 

She frowns. It was her idea, but Willow’s magic, Willow who initiated it. She doesn’t correct him, doesn’t want Willow on his radar. “Had to. Big honkin’ evil targeting potential slayers, looking to destroy all of existence. We needed to empower them, and we needed to save the world.”

“So I suppose I owe you a debt of gratitude then,” Raphael says. 

“I dunno.” She’s not used to hearing that sort of thing from a vampire. “You might’ve liked the post-apocalyptic hellscape, being a vampire and all.”

“I wouldn’t have.” He sounds certain. “There are far more joys to be had in a human world than a demon one.”

“I agree,” she says. “That’s why slayers do what we do.”

“Including targeting HYDRA bases, apparently.”

“That’s not -- I’m just helping.”

“You’re very kind.”

“You’re really testing that.”

“Ah, Buffy. Maybe I am. That’s all I have to tell you, now. Your date will be able to fill in the details about the base. Time was, he was shutting them down left and right. I remember it. He had them shaking in their combat boots. I’m sure if you two set your mind to this one, you’ll easily succeed.” 

“You sound oddly okay with that for the guy who’s been selling them tech.”

“There are other ways to make money.” He shrugs again. “It is no concern of mine.”

“Pardon me,” Steve says from behind her. “Can I cut in?”

He must’ve seen the disappearing act Raphael pulled. She’s relieved to hear Steve’s voice, to feel his presence, large and reassuring at her side. 

“Be my guest,” Raphael says to Steve, but then he looks at her. “Although, he may be wasting his time. From what I understand, I’m more your type than he is.” 

She feels a bolt of heat shoot through her and land in her cheeks. Raphael laughs. 

“I told you some of us were familiar with you and your reputation, even before the change. One vampire may be happenstance, companions at battle, but three...” He smiles. “Well. It makes me wonder. Perhaps if we’d met under different circumstances.”

“You’re disgusting,” Buffy says, spitting the words. 

“Don’t be angry. It’s only the truth.” 

“Here’s the truth: if I see you again…”

“I know. I know. But slayer, you and I have no quarrel.” Raphael smiles, stepping back. “You won’t find any bodies dotting my trail home. Just myself and my lovers, enjoying our lives.” 

“And I’m supposed to believe that?” she asks. She can feel Steve’s eyes on them, wonders at his silence, at what he must be thinking.

“It is of no consequence to me, whether you do or do not.” 

She finds herself thinking. Maybe he _was_ being honest. Maybe he was hard to track not because he was good at killing discreetly, but because he was feeding from willing victims. It was gross, but on a scale of one to evil, she’s seen worse.

“Fine.” Buffy fashions her expression into a serious glare. “No bodies, no more deals with HYDRA or any other big evil organizations buying up dangerous crap, and I let you walk out of here without following.” She can see him breaking into a smirk. “We found you once. We can do it again.”

He pauses for a second, watching her, then nods.

By the time she looks at Steve and back, Raphael is gone, his dark hair a blur in the crowd.

“Do you believe him?” Steve asks. 

Before she can answer, the song changes, something faster, and the other couples on the dance floor shift. She suddenly feels like they’re in the way. She grabs Steve’s hand, and his eyes go wide, seemingly more alarmed by the idea of being guided onto the dance floor than at staring down a vampire. 

“I don’t-- I’ve never--” 

“Oh.” She alters course, moving towards an empty table. 

“Sorry,” he says, looking away.

“It’s no big,” she says and takes a seat. He’s placed her long-forgotten glass of wine in front of her, and she gladly takes a sip.

A moment passes. 

“I think I do believe him,” Buffy says, finally. “About the killing, anyway. But even if he’s being honest, you still can’t trust him. His moral compass, I mean. Maybe he only feeds off of his lovers, but some of them are … thralled, or… I don’t know, underage. He might think ‘oh, I’m not killing anyone, the slayers have no quarrel,’ but what he’s doing actually isn’t okay.” 

Steve doesn’t answer.

“What do you think?” she asks.

“Could bear looking into. To be sure.” 

“Later maybe,” she says, and he nods. “As for the deal I gave him, it doesn’t matter if I trust him. If we catch wind of something like this again, he’ll be dust on it when I’m done with him.”

Raphael’s words about her _reputation_ are ringing in her ears. She wants to explain. Wants to get ahead of it this time, before Steve jumps to conclusions. 

“He -- That stuff. That Raphael was saying about me.” She doesn’t know where to start. 

“Buffy, it’s okay.” Steve leans forward, resting his forearms on the table. “You don’t have to explain anything.”

“No, I want to. If I can.”

He nods, watching her.

“I… the two good vampires. I was involved with them. Many years ago. I loved them, at different times. It couldn’t work, for a lot of reasons, then or now. But they’re still… important to me.” She swallows. “And the third was a stupid fling. Not worth mentioning, though I guess now that’s also part of my _reputation_.”

She waits to see his face, to guess at what he might be thinking. 

“I thought that might be the case,” Steve says, and she feels her stomach jump. “The way you spoke about them, that’s all. Particularly the one who earned his soul.”

“And that doesn’t… wig you out?”

“No. Most of us don’t get a choice in who we fall in love with.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“And -- for that matter, vampires aren’t my _type_.” She finds her mouth continuing to move, despite her internal objections. “If anything, my type is strong, principled guys who fight evil and don’t take a ton of damage, and it’s not my fault that the category has very occasionally included a vamp or two--” She stops. “Um. Anyway. I appreciate you listening, and making with the non-judgment.”

“Anytime,” Steve says, looking amused and unusually calm.

“Okay. Big change of subject away from my exes. Did you hear what Raphael said, about the tech?” 

Steve nods. “I did.”

“Super-hearing. Nifty. Okay, so what do we do to get into this base? Try for the sneaky approach or just go at it, brute force?”

“We usually go with brute force on these things,” Steve says.

“Goody. I’m a little light on the weaponry in my carry-on, but I’m adaptable, I can grab something heavy or take one off them once we’re in--” 

“ _Except_ , we don’t usually shut down a HYDRA base with only two people.” 

“Oh. Do you need more slayers, because the Paris contingent is a little junior, but the ride from London was fast--” 

“I was actually thinking some of _my_ people. Just a couple. For support.”

“Ah,” Buffy says. “Time to bring in the Harlem Globetrotters.”

\--

The walk back to the hotel is quick and Buffy focuses on the feel of the warm breeze on her arms and through her hair. It’s beginning to feel a little surreal now, with Steve tapping out text messages on his secure phone to -- his people.

Y’know. Avengers.

Sure. 

Normal stuff. 

Inside, she changes out of her dress into a set of comfy pants and a t-shirt, rinsing the makeup off of her face at the sink. She looks up to find Steve watching her at the vanity, like he’s waiting for her. He’s still in his tuxedo shirt and pants, but the tie and jacket are gone. It’s a good look for him, but, then again, every look is a good look for him.

“They’ll be here tomorrow afternoon. Natasha -- Black Widow. And Sam, my friend, his codename is Falcon.”

“I don’t think I know that one,” Buffy says as she ties her hair into a loose pony.

“No, you wouldn’t. He isn’t technically an Avenger. At least not yet. But he’s a good fighter and a good man.”

“And then? What’s the plan?”

“We go in first thing in the morning, day after tomorrow. We’ll most likely have some additional aerial support as well. Tomorrow we’ll walk through the plan, it’s SOP for this kind of mission, but it’s important to review, given it’s your first time, and--” He pauses, puts his hands into his pockets. “If you’re willing, I’d like to train with you tomorrow before they arrive. Teach you how HYDRA fights.”

“Count me in,” Buffy says.

Steve smiles, eyes a little bright. He looks energized. She knows what that’s like, to feel identity in the mission. He doesn’t seem like a guy who’s any good at sitting idle. She knows what that’s like, too.

“You going to sleep?” Buffy asks. 

He shakes his head. “No, not tonight. I have more to map out.”

“Don’t be uncomfortable sofa guy.”

“Noted,” Steve says. “Get some rest, Buffy. We’re going to have a busy couple of days.”

“Pot, kettle,” she says, pointing a finger at him, and he smiles. 

After he leaves, it takes her a while to fall asleep. She pushes Raphael out of her head, hating that little bit of her that knows he’s right. He could’ve been her type under different circumstances.

Instead, she thinks about Steve.

Steve who is strong, and principled, and fights evil, and takes basically no damage. Steve who really looks like the just-turned-thirty he is when he smiles, or awkwardly adjusts his hair in the mirror, or gets nervous on the dance floor.

Steve who’s compassionate, and wants to find a way to double check that slaying vamps is really necessary. Who doesn’t judge her for having a disastrous romantic past. Who’s figured out how to make peace with the world around him even though _his_ world was ripped out from under him. She’d been in that place, and hadn’t coped nearly as well.

She thinks about these things and all that’s to come tomorrow and the day after, and, eventually, she falls asleep.


	13. Chapter 13

With Natasha, it had been as simple as tapping out a message: _HYDRA has the tech._

She’d written back asking for where and when he needed her, he’d sent her the address to the hotel, and that was it. She was supposed to be undercover somewhere, but she always seemed to be able to jump into whatever was needed at a moment’s notice, and he was far from questioning how she slipped in and out of her longer assignments.

With Sam, he’d texted, _Need you to come help shut down a base in Paris_. 

Of course, Sam had responded that he’d be there on the first flight out, including the flight number and his ETA. But then he’d followed up with, _Do I need to pack my crucifix?_

Hard to blame him, the way their last conversation went.

 _No,_ Steve had responded. _All human as far as I’m aware. Just need you and your wings._

Sam had sent back a thumbs up emoji, Steve had sent the hotel address, and from there he had figured they were all good.

Tony, meanwhile, had warranted another call, tied so deeply to the tech as he was. So Steve waits until he’s sure Buffy’s asleep and then he dials.

“Give me some good news,” Tony says by way of greeting. Steve thinks he can make out the low, crackling sound of welding in the background. 

With anyone else, Steve would be unsure if Tony even knew it was Steve who was calling, as generic as Tony’s request had been. But Steve had once greeted Tony with something like _Hello, Tony, this is Steve Rogers calling_ , and while Steve can take some ribbing, that wasn’t a mistake he’d make twice.

“Afraid not,” he says instead, launching into it. “HYDRA has it already. Purchased on behalf of Baron von Strucker.” 

“Strucker -- why does that sound familiar?”

“He’s a former Agent of SHIELD,” Steve says. “Now he’s the de facto leader of HYDRA across Eurasia.”

“Damnit,” Tony says. Steve hears a clang in the background, and pictures Tony tossing a wrench or maybe the welding mask. “All right. Did you kill the vampire who took it at least?”

His tone is casual. He seems to have adjusted to the idea of vampires, then. Steve isn’t surprised.

“Also no. The gala was too public for that. But the good news is, he was cooperative,” Steve says. He’s not ready to launch into the specifics of why they’d let a vampire go on a promise that he’s not a killer. 

“So you’re going after HYDRA, then?”

“Day after tomorrow,” Steve says. “There’s a base underground just outside of Paris, at the Parc Naturel Régional de la Haute Vallée de Chevreuse.” 

“What do you need?” This is the part of Tony that Steve appreciates the most: no hesitation, when it comes to lending his help.

“You mentioned you had some additional program in beta testing?” 

“The Iron Legion. They’re pared down, autonomous suits that are controlled by JARVIS. Eventually, the idea is that they’ll be protecting civilians. Sectioning off hot zones. Evacuating people. We needed more of that help in New York.”

He’s right. They had.

“Can they do more than protect civilians?” Steve asks.

“Honeycakes. Of course they can; I made them.” The welding sound starts up again. “When I say pared down, we’re grading on a curve. They’re on par with the Mark 3 or 4.”

“So JARVIS would be able to pilot out here and cover the air?”

“Why, isn’t your bird friend coming along for the ride?” 

“Sam’s coming,” Steve says. “We could use a little more coverage than one man can provide.”

“You said the base was underground. You’re concerned they have airborne defenses?”

“I am,” Steve says. “They know we have flyers. I’m concerned they’ll respond in kind.” It was only a matter of time.

“How many do you need?”

Steve isn’t sure what an appropriate number is. Tony is always designing, always making something new. How many are there?

“Two?” He guesses. “To sub in for you and Thor.”

“As if,” Tony says with a scoff. “They’re not _that_ good. I’ll send five and make it easy.”

“Will they be discrete?” Steve thinks about the way Tony had blasted music out of the Quinjet’s loudspeakers the first time they’d met. Tony had a habit of doing that, actually. It’s how Steve first learned about AC/DC. And while he and the team weren’t going to operate undercover in the strictest of senses, they also didn’t want to announce their presence before the right time. 

“Compared to me, you mean? Yes. They’ve got cloaking and they’ll stay out of range until they’re needed. J?”

“Captain Rogers,” JARVIS says to announce his presence, voice as pleasant as ever. “I’ll be at your disposal via the comms system in your StarkPhone or earpiece. Five of the Iron Legion will be in your vicinity by tomorrow morning.”

“Thank you,” Steve says. 

“You’re welcome,” JARVIS says. “I’ve also been able to access a map of HYDRA’s base in Paris and will forward you the details for review. Regarding the whereabouts of the device, my guess is that valuables are kept in the lower levels of the facility.”

In his Commando days, they used to do weeks of stake outs or undercover work to get a _guess_ at the layout of a HYDRA base. The rest of them would wait, squatting in abandoned row houses. Steve would sketch the description on old newspapers by candlelight and hope they had it halfway right. Sometimes they didn’t.

JARVIS was as magic to him as anything else he’d seen since waking. 

“Is Miss Saint Marie coming?” Tony asks.

“Yes.” Steve doesn’t bother pretending to feign confusion about who he means.

“Who else?” 

“Right now the team will be Buffy, Natasha, Sam, and myself, plus the Iron Legion,” Steve says. “Unless Bruce can make it?” 

Steve knew Tony and Bruce kept in pretty close contact. 

“Nah, not unless it’s red alert,” Tony says. “He’s going for a no-Hulk streak. Like no shave November.”

“Give him my regards,” Steve says.

“I will. And it sounds like your team could use a few upgrades. I’ll send some other goodies out.” 

Steve isn’t sure exactly what Tony’s going to send, but he’s sure it’ll be useful and thanks him all the same. Steve’s phone pings, and he moves it away from his ear long enough to see that he’s received an email from JARVIS. That’ll be the map. 

“Keep in touch,” Tony says. 

“I will. Tony?” 

“Yeah?”

“We’ll get it taken care of.”

“Never a doubt in my mind where you’re concerned, Cap.”

Before Steve can think of how to respond to that, the line disconnects.

\--

After, he finds a pencil in the small desk in the parlour and goes down to the lobby to grab a newspaper. He doesn’t have his laptop, let alone the large blue holograms Tony uses to visualize things, so a sketch will have to do, even if it’s not perfectly to scale. 

He loses himself in the work of it, reproducing the small map on his phone across the length of the newspapers laid across the dining table. There’s something comforting -- familiar and reassuring. The flow of the graphite over the paper calms him, helps him think and strategize. 

This will do. 

After he finishes the sketch, he jots down little symbols for each of the team and plots out where each person will be, thinking through their strengths, their contingencies.

Soon, he’s looking at the first pinpricks of pink and orange out the window and he places the pencil down, stretching his arms up high. 

He has more than enough to share with the team.

Time for a run.

\--

Buffy can tell by the way the light outlines the curtains -- bright white -- she’s slept in again. 

Whoops. 

She stretches, taking her time in getting out of bed and visiting the ensuite. When she heads into the parlor she has to do a double take.

Steve’s pushed the uncomfortable sofa and the coffee table to one side of the room. The dining table and end tables are pushed against the other wall, making the parlor a wide-open space with furniture at the periphery.

How did she sleep through that?

Even though the dining table is pushed to the one wall, Steve is sitting at one of the open spots, dressed in another tight t-shirt and pair of sweats. He looks like he’s been for a run again and she idly wonders whether he’d rested at all. 

There’s a large sheet of newspaper laying across the table, and a large box on the floor underneath. He has a plate of food on his lap, which he stops eating as he sees her, pausing to gesture at the empty side of the table, where instead of newspaper there is another plate of food (covered by one of those metal lids) and a steaming cup of coffee.

“Good morning,” he says.

“Morning. What’s all this?” Buffy asks. 

“Breakfast. Eggs and toast -- I hope you like it. And then I thought we could train.”

“Thanks,” she says.

She sits, scooting closer to him and eyeing the newspaper more carefully. It’s covered in an intricate sketch that’s a little hard for her to make out through the black of the newsprint. As she examines it, she can tell it’s a map of what must be the base. It’s incredibly detailed, the lines and corners look like they were drawn with a ruler. It looks like art.

“Did you draw that?”

He looks down, expression bashful. “It helps me to think. It’s the base. I have the map on my phone if you prefer to look at it that way.”

“No. It’s really good. It looks like a real, y’know, blueprint.”

“I like to draw,” Steve says. “I studied art for a little while.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You didn’t need to be a big fellow to draw well,” Steve says with a shrug.

“I could never draw,” Buffy says, moving back to the un-newspapered part of the table, taking the lid off her plate, and grabbing a fork. “But my mom owned an art gallery. I should have more appreciation for art than I do. I didn’t really spend enough time there. Didn’t have enough time to spend, back in those days.”

Steve watches her as she takes a bite of her toast.

“Your mother -- she’s in Europe too?” 

“No. She died when I was twenty. Natural causes.” She takes a sip of her coffee, enjoying the bitter. “We wound up having to break the lease at the gallery and sell all the pieces below market, to help cover the mortgage.”

“I’m sorry.” 

“It was a long time ago.” She takes a bite of the eggs, chews. Swallows.

“My parents were both gone before Project Rebirth,” Steve says, though there’s no sadness in his voice. “My father passed when I was young, and my mother a few years after that. Bucky was all I had, and by the time I enlisted, he was already overseas.”

“Would you have done it, do you think, if your parents were still around?”

He smiles. “Might’ve asked my ma’s permission first.”

“Ha,” Buffy says. “I still remember my mom when she found out I was the slayer. She said, ‘have you tried _not_ being a slayer?’” 

“What did you say?”

“There was nothing _to_ say.” Buffy takes another sip of coffee. “She came around eventually. And I get it now. I didn’t have three hundred girls backing me back then. She cared more about me than about the rest of the world.” 

“That was her job,” Steve says.

“She did it well,” Buffy replies, letting herself smile. 

They eat the rest of their food in quiet, and when they’re done, Steve takes her empty plate and coffee mug and puts them at the end table by the front entrance. 

“I can review some of the strategy with you now, if you want,” he says. “Or…”

“Or?” 

“We can train, and save the strategy for when Sam and Natasha are here.”

She eyes him, his muted-yet-eager expression, the way he stands at a posture that looks like he’s ready to spring into action. 

“Training is good,” she says, and he looks pleased. “Let me get dressed and then we can get started.”

\--

When she returns in her blue jeans and a spare tank top she packed, she’s surprised to find Steve standing at the center of the room, holding a handgun. It’s the kind with a silencer. She hasn’t seen one of those in real life since her time with Riley.

“Um,” she says. “I’m not really a fan of those things.”

“I’d rather avoid them as well,” Steve says. “But this is what HYDRA fights with.”

“And you have one too? You didn’t strike me as the gun type,” Buffy says.

“I wouldn’t say that I am. Normally, I stick with the shield, because I’m either fighting someone I don’t want to kill, or someone who’s not going to be particularly damaged by bullets.”

That gun sitting around in the hotel room is a somewhat disconcerting thought. She trusts Steve, but guns skeeze her on a visceral level.

“It’s not loaded,” he says, watching her. “I don’t plan to use it tomorrow, but I also don’t like to be unprepared.”

She crosses her arms. “I get that.”

“Have you had any experience with disarming enemies?”

“Well, sure,” she says, voice thoughtful. She did have that sort of experience, even if it was usually an axe or a hammer or a sword.

“Enemies with guns?” he asks, presumably picking up on her tone.

She bites her lip. “Not usually. And not in a while.”

“Any other experience with guns? Do you know how to use one?”

She thinks about her disastrous Homecoming with Cordelia back in high school, about Jonathan in the clock tower, about Riley, who kept one locked up in his dorm room, but who usually used the Initiative’s special shocker weapons. That might be the last time she’d seen a gun, all ages ago.

“Not really. Oh! I was shot once. If that counts.”

He frowns. “That’s not what I meant.”

“That’s all I got.” She shakes out her shoulders, waiting for his instructions.

“Then we’ll have to start from the beginning. The first thing to remember is that it’s better to get away than to try to disarm someone,” he says. 

“Makes sense,” she says. 

“If you can’t get away, then the goal is to disarm your attacker. You’ll want to make sure the gun is pointed away from your body at all times. That might mean twisting the arm, it might mean grabbing the gun from the hand. Whatever you do, focus on redirecting the line of fire and gaining control over the weapon. Things happen fast. Don’t worry about spraining or breaking their wrist.”

“Got it.” 

“Do you want to practice?”

“Yeah. Should I just come at you?” She looks around. “I don’t want to break the five-star hotel room.”

“We won’t. This is more of a close-quarters situation. We’ll stick to the center of the room. I’ll start.”

She nods, and as soon he registers her assent he’s springing towards her, the gun held in two hands and pointed at her chest. His fingers don’t actually appear to be on the trigger, which she thinks is odd for a second since it isn’t loaded, until she realizes he’s getting closer and she should probably focus. She sidesteps, moving out of the line of fire, and even though he follows her with his aim, she pushes through with a burst of speed until she’s at his side, twisting his arm so it’s pointed at the floor. 

He doesn’t put a lot of strength behind his counter, and she supposes he’s imitating a regular human. He just struggles a little to regain control, but she’s able to get her hand over the front of the barrel and--

“Not like that,” he says.

“Right,” she says, adjusting her grip. That would’ve been ‘bye bye, fingers.’

“Twist my wrist and grab it from the top,” he says. 

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t.”

She does as he asks, putting her best guess at the level of strength that would be necessary to pull something out of a regular human’s grip. He lets it go as if she’d overpowered him, but instead of getting it into her control, it falls onto the floor. 

He quickly drops down to get it like a real bad guy would, and in a rush, she kicks it away. It skitters across the room towards the far wall. She pauses, waiting to see if he’ll stay in character and go after it again. He stands, leaving it on the floor out of their reach.

“I’m guessing kicking it doesn’t count as keeping in control of the weapon,” she says.

“It’s a better option than letting them get it back, but you run the risk of accidental discharge.”

“And that’s just embarrassing for everyone.”

“Do you want to try again?”

“Yeah,” she says.

He nods, and walks across the room, picking up the gun again. The change in him is noticeable once it’s in his hand, his posture crouched lower, both arms raised, one hand cupped over the other. 

Figuring she may as well try for as much flare as the room allows, she ducks and rolls, popping up behind him and grabbing right at the top of the gun, away from the front this time. As he begins to struggle at the approximate level of a regular human, she puts some muscle into it and wrenches the gun away.

As soon as she has it, he relaxes, falling out of character. 

“Now what?” she says. She has the urge to dangle it by its handle and toss it away, or to snap it in half. That can’t be right.

“I’ll show you how to unload it.”

As he steps closer to her, it suddenly occurs to her that all the gun jargon sounds sort of innuendo-ey.

“May I?” he asks.

“Sure,” she says, and offers him back the handgun.

“No, you hold it. I’ll--” He steps very close to her, and his hands go around hers. “Is this okay?”

“Uh huh,” she says, trying to tamp down the little thrill that courses through her as their fingers touch.

“You want to make sure you point it in a safe direction. In a combat situation, these will be loaded, and the number one rule is always to keep it pointed where there’s the least potential for harm in the event of discharge.”

“Check. Point away from face.”

She hears him exhale a little laugh, and she can’t stifle her own smile, turning to look at him. He’s very close, close enough that she can see a little freckle on the side of his nose, and the color of his eyes, blue, with flecks of green. He seems to notice her studying him, eyes moving from the gun to meet her own, and suddenly it feels very quiet. She licks her lips, and his eyes flit down to watch.

The moment hangs in the air. It wouldn’t take that much effort to stand up on her tippy toes, to press her lips to his to see what he would do. He swallows and she can see the rise and fall of his Adam's apple. She could press her lips to that instead. That would work too. She wants to. But she waits to see what he’ll do, if he feels the same. And she doesn’t want to push him, when she isn’t sure how he feels, when he’s seemed so shy and uncomfortable around her sometimes.

He clears his throat, and the trance isn’t quite broken, but it’s dampened. Maybe now isn’t the time.

“Then what?” she asks, voice quiet. 

“Um.” His gaze moves back down to the gun. “With unloading it.”

“Right.”

“Like this,” he says, and he tilts it so she can see the underside. “HYDRA’s handheld weaponry will have a magazine, not a cylinder.”

“A cylinder is the kind with the … spinning thing. Like the cowboy guns?”

“That’s right. HYDRA won’t have those. This is the magazine release.” He indicates a small button, and she watches as he presses it and the bottom opens up. The magazine pops out, and he hands it to her, his fingertips brushing her palm. There’s nothing loaded into it but she can see the empty space where the ammo would go. “You’ll also want to make sure the chamber is clear.” She watches as he takes the gun from her, pulling at the back of it until the little chamber on top opens. It’s empty too. “It would be right here. Once you’ve ejected the cartridge and the magazine’s out, the weapon is clear. Toss the weapon far, and drop the magazine gently.”

“Huh,” she says. She’s not sure she absorbed any of that.

“Do you want to try it yourself?” He gently takes the weapon away, then hands it back to her with the magazine back in place.

“What could go wrong?” she asks. She knows it’s safe, but it still feels unnatural.

He takes a step back, which is helpful insofar as more distance from him equals more focus. She pushes the button herself, this time, and removes the magazine. She imagines dropping it gently to the floor. Then she opens up the chamber and imagines fishing in there to pull out one more bullet. 

She’s clunky with it, and slow. That’s not what she’s used to.

“That’s good,” he says. “Do it again.”

She tries it a few more times, until it starts to get easier. When it comes to using her hands, years of being a quickdraw with a stake have made her a fast learner. Half of her fighting came down to muscle memory, after all.

“Good,” he says. “Let’s go again. I’ll show you how to disarm someone who comes at you from behind.”

\--

There’s a lot to learn. She practices disarming him from every possible angle, gets quick with grabbing the handgun safely out of his hand and quickly unloading it. He doesn’t put up much fight, just holds steady and resists her, and soon she’s asking him to attack -- make it realistic. 

So, next, they practice her disarming someone who’s actually trying to punch, kick, _and_ shoot, and she finds that level of multitasking more akin to what it’s like to fight two or three vampires instead of just one. 

It’s a little tougher than she’d expected. 

She’s not sure how long they train, but eventually she feels like she’s got it, and what’s more, she starts to get hungry again. On the next pause between rounds she suggests grabbing some lunch. He agrees. They order in, and by the time there’s a knock on the door, she’s all too ready for her croque monsieur. 

She’s sitting on the uncomfortable sofa, eating from a plate on her lap. He’s sitting on the floor, using the coffee table as his dining spot. From this angle, she can see the curve of his ankles, dusted with hair, to his bare feet, which are paler than the rest of him. She can see the way he switches positions from his legs out in front of him to sitting criss-cross, like he gets a little restless in between. She finds that she likes noticing these little details.

“What if they have, like, the big guns?” Buffy asks when her sandwich is halfway gone, looping a strand of hair behind her ear. 

“If it’s an automatic weapon, your only focus should be on getting away from it,” Steve says, tone serious.

“See, this is why I prefer vampires,” she says. “Way less scary.”

“You and I will be going in to destroy the device,” Steve says. “It’s too dangerous for HYDRA to use automatic weapons in enclosed spaces. Even the bad guys know not to do that. It’s more likely to be a handgun, or hand-to-hand.”

“Hand-to-hand. That’s more like it,” she says.

“What about other weapons?” he asks around a bite of his sandwich. “Are there any you’re comfortable with, besides a stake?”

She shrugs. “Axes, obviously. Crossbows - I’m a bigtime crossbow gal.” At his look, she pauses. “I’m guessing those aren’t the kind you meant.” He shakes his head. “What about swords? HYDRA isn’t big into sword fighting? I can rock a sword fight.”

“Not so much,” Steve says.

“I suppose I’ll be doing a little less beheading than usual.”

“I sure hope so.”

“Why, though? What weapons did you have in mind?” she asks.

“Have you used any electroshock weapons?” Steve asks. “Tony sent us some gear early this morning. I think he assumed you might like some of the same stuff Natasha uses. If you want to try it, we can do a little more training before the others arrive.”

She’s reminded of the Initiative again. Thinking about practicing _electroshocking_ Steve is deeply unpleasant, no matter how little damage he takes.

“Hard pass,” Buffy says. “I once zapped myself with a faulty toaster in Rome. Not fun.”

She takes another bite of her food, then looks up at him. “Should I be concerned? This isn’t my kind of fight.”

“No. For one thing, you’ll have them outmatched on strength and speed. And now you know how to disarm them.”

It’s some consolation. She’s fought humans before, and fought baddies with guns once in a while, but nothing like this.

“And I’ll cover you,” Steve says.

She feels warmth spread in her chest at the way he says that so calmly. “Thank you. Back atcha." 

“There’s something else,” he says, standing up. He pops the last bite of the sandwich into his mouth. He makes his way towards the dining table and it isn’t until he’s pulling out the box from underneath that she remembers it was there.

“The electroshock whatsits?” she guesses.

“Yes, they’re in here, but this is what I want to show you.” He opens the flaps and takes out what looks like -- a black wet suit?

“Is that--”

“It’s armor,” he says, bringing it to her. “Bulletproof. Like mine.”

“It looks like Catwoman cosplay,” she says, taking it out of his hands. It feels kind of like a wet suit, too, but light and smooth. It’s hard to believe it would stop a bullet. “I’m not sure how to feel about this. I’ve always been a Casual Friday kind of fighter. Do I need to try it on now?”

“No,” he says. “But you should wear it tomorrow. It’ll keep you protected.”

“I’ll think about it,” she says. 

She remembers how Black Widow -- Natasha -- wore something similar at the battle of New York, remembers the way Xander had admired her ‘fighting style’ a little more than strictly necessary. And hey, Buffy is all for ladies wearing whatever it is that makes them feel best, but… this? It wasn’t for her.

She’s thinking about how to vocalize some of these thoughts when there’s another knock at the door. Steve jumps up, moving to the dining table and checking his phone. Then, he moves to the door, ducking down slightly to look through the peephole. 

“It’s Sam,” he says to her. 

As Steve opens the door, she stands, placing her dirty plate on the coffee table on top of his, and brushing her hands against her jeans. 

Meeting new people. Yay.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to crazygirlne for looking this over!  
> Sorry for the delay. I'm now working from home full-time while taking care of a toddler and finding both time and concentration hard to come by. But I am committed to finishing this story! Feedback appreciated at this weird and crazy time. :)

Buffy’s more surprised than she should be that Sam is actually… pretty cool.

From what Steve had said, Sam was also military, and her associations with that type of guy (barring Steve) were maybe, kinda not-so-good. But Sam was a nice contrast, both to her prior experiences, and with Steve himself. 

For instance, where Steve had seemed uncomfortable at first, and where guys like Graham and Forrest seemed less than friendly, Sam had no problem relaxing on the uncomfortable sofa (still pushed against the wall), and diving right in. 

“So, _are_ there leprechauns, or what?” he asks. 

“Not that I’m aware of,” she says, uncrossing and then recrossing her legs where she sits at the table. She remembers asking Giles that same question a long time ago. 

Sam has helped himself to a bottle of Perrier in the fridge and he sips it now and again. Steve’s been quiet, with that focused energy she’s coming to identify as _Captain America_. 

“That’s something, at least,” Sam replies.

“Though I wouldn’t mind a pot of gold,” Buffy says, and Sam lets out a light chuckle. “So you’re just learning about all the vampire stuff, too?”

Sam nods. 

It’s weird. All the Initiative guys, and whoever it was Riley ran with now, they were way on the up-and-up when it came to the supernatural. To Buffy, it had seemed like the military was big into that world, and yet here were two superhero caliber guys who had no idea. Why were they left out of the loop? Or was it that Riley and his were actually in the minority?

She doesn’t voice any of these thoughts. 

“And how wigged are you right now?” she says instead.

“I’m coping,” Sam says, tone ironic. “Rather not have to deal with them myself if I can avoid it.”

“Coping is good,” Buffy replies. 

“What about you? How long have you been slaying vampires?”

“A long time. About eighteen years.”

Sam nods, like he’s studying her. There’s something in the way he can jump from animated to analytical that’s interesting, like he’s had some experience taking a step back and focusing on others.

“And are you... army, too?” she asks. 

“Hell no,” he says, animated again. “Air Force.” 

She’s worried that she offended him until she sees him crack a grin.

“And that’s… a big difference,” she says. 

“I’d say about 30 points on the ASVAB,” Sam says, and Buffy nods, letting his reference fly over her head. 

“With the Air Force, I just picture ‘Top Gun,’” Buffy says.

“Ah -- no,” Sam says. “Top Gun was Navy.” 

“What, really?” she asks.

“Really.”

“What about the -- y’know --” (She knows there must be a better word for them.) “Airplanes?”

“Navy. Tom Cruise was a Naval Aviator.”

“Ah. And the Navy versus the Air Force, that’s… also a big difference,” she guesses.

“Buffy, let me just explain it this way: If the Air Force has an enemy, it’s not ISIS. It’s the Navy.” 

“I’m gonna take your word on that,” Buffy says. 

“Appreciate it,” he says. 

“And now you…” She looks at his gear, the wings she supposes, in a special bag and leaning against the wall near Steve’s shield. “Fly with a big pair of metal wings with the Avengers instead.”

“On occasion,” he says. 

“Gee. It’s not often a person makes me feel boring,” Buffy says, tone wry. 

“You know what? I’ll take it,” Sam says.

She lets silence linger for a second and turns her gaze to Steve, who’s wearing a calm and serious expression as he leans against the wall. He’s watching them, focused but unbothered. He’s not in the mood to chat, but doesn’t mind listening. She gets it. 

Sam sees her shift her focus, and he does too.

“Do we have an ETA for Tash?” Sam asks.

Steve stands up straight, grabbing his phone from his back pocket and taking a quick look before replacing it. 

“She’s almost here,” he says. 

Buffy’s stomach leaps, and she tamps it down, trying to force herself not to feel nervous about the additional influx of Steve’s people. 

After all, she’s well known for being both perky _and_ fun. She’ll probably make a good enough impression to avoid having to bail on the whole mission. She also tamps down thinking about why she cares so much about what Steve’s friends think of her. 

Instead, she loses herself again in the conversation with Sam a little longer, learning about how he’s originally from New York ( _Harlem_ , he says, and she thinks this is another area where she doesn’t quite get the nuance -- Harlem is not Brooklyn is not Manhattan, apparently) how he counsels vets who have PTSD, how he was out of combat entirely until he met Steve. 

He’s a good guy. That much is clear. And it’s clear that he and Steve mean a lot to each other.

She’s caught up in all this when another soft knock sounds at the door. 

Sam had waited for someone to answer. Natasha, on the other hand, lets herself in after a second that Buffy guesses is more a courtesy than anything else. 

Natasha is dressed in black, but regular clothes, not the tight catsuit that Buffy had, herself, been offered that morning. Her red hair is parted in the center and tied back. She doesn’t look like she just got off a long flight, way too polished for that, but she also _does_ look like she’s here for business. 

Steve approaches Natasha to grab her rucksack, which she hands over. He places it near the shield and wings. He thanks her for coming and she nods. As she looks up, she finds Sam first, and nods at him in greeting. Sam nods back, face friendly. 

They’ve worked together before, then. Buffy had thought they’d both been in DC but wasn’t a hundred percent sure.

“Buffy, this is Natasha. Natasha, this is Buffy,” Steve says, as he walks back. 

Buffy stands as Natasha approaches, and extends her hand. Natasha shakes it -- strong and soft -- and greets her. She has a quiet confidence that Buffy could easily mistake for a slayer, even if she doesn’t feel that humming in her bones that tells her another chosen one is nearby.

“Nice to meet you,” Buffy says. 

“Same,” Natasha replies. “Steve told me you’re keeping him on his toes.”

Steve frowns, like he’s thinking of disputing that.

“I have a feeling that’s where he’s used to being, hanging with you guys,” Buffy says. 

“You’re not wrong,” Natasha says, then turns, surveying the room. “Nice place. Tony?”

“Tony,” Steve says in agreement.

“Gotta hand it to him,” she says. 

“Sure. Let’s hand it to him,” Sam says. “And meanwhile, I’ve got a regular hotel room up the street, which I paid for out of my _own_ pocket. You must be special.”

“I’m not—” Steve stops. “And, anyway, I think it was JARVIS who picked it.”

Natasha shrugs, lips downturned, but she says nothing. 

“If JARVIS picked it, Tony’s still the one who programmed JARVIS with the _special hotel_ setting,” Sam says.

“He’s right,” Natasha agrees.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Steve says, redirecting. “Let’s start with the plan for tomorrow and we can get back to the chatter later.”

Steve lays his phone on the table and opens a call to JARVIS, who Buffy recalls is an artificial intelligence, yet who, as he answers with a greeting, sounds more like Giles than Siri. 

“Miss Summers, Mr. Wilson - it’s a pleasure to meet you,” he says very politely when Steve introduces them.

“Yeah, uh, same,” Buffy replies. Sam’s returned greeting blurs in the background. She can understand why Steve thought he was a man in the ceiling. 

From there, Steve takes the lead, JARVIS answering questions when prompted, and planning time begins.

\--

The plan is pretty much what Buffy would have put together herself, if she made plans that included flying guys and super spies and omniscient supercomputers. 

JARVIS takes the skies from a distance, with empty Iron Man suits called the Iron Legion posted at various points around the circumference of the base. 

Sam takes the skies closer in, disarming men on the ground from above.

Natasha heads to central command and works with JARVIS in her earpiece to disable any security measures, booby traps, or access restrictions.

Buffy and Steve go in head-first towards the lower levels, find the tech, and destroy it. They keep JARVIS in their earpieces to provide info on any other tech they uncover and whether it’s necessary (and safe) to destroy it as well.

How can JARVIS, up in the sky flying five suits around, figure out what they’re looking at three floors underground? Buffy’s having a hard time with the logistics of it, so she just imagines it’s magic, and that helps.

The strategy sesh is different than with the Scoobies, with no silly jokes and no donuts, but also not what she associates with military and the Initiative, because every one of them feels like a leader in their own right. No sitting in an audience while Professor Walsh briefs them. Buffy isn’t sure exactly what she’d compare it to. The closest thing she can think of is when she’s worked with other senior slayers -- even ones she’s had bumps in the road with, like Faith. People who were as confident in their ability to save the day as Buffy herself was.

That confidence comes out in different ways.

Sam interjects once in a while, and Steve really _listens_ to him, even changes course here or there at his request. From what Buffy can tell, Sam really puts the _wing_ in wingman.

In contrast, Natasha listens quietly, seeming to absorb every word from Sam, Steve, and JARVIS, yet Buffy couldn’t possibly mistake her expression for passive. And once everything is laid out, she always asks the important questions.

“Strucker is the one in charge, right?” Natasha says. “We planning to take him in?”

“To where?” Sam asks. “There’s no more SHIELD.”

Natasha shrugs. “To us.”

“We don’t know if Baron von Strucker will be at the base,” JARVIS says, “Though they are indeed housing Sir’s tech at his orders.” 

“If he’s there, I’ll handle him,” Natasha says. Buffy has no doubt that she will.

After a beat, Natasha speaks again. “What about that tech. How do we make sure they don’t use it on us?”

“I’m glad you asked, Miss Romanov,” JARVIS says. “The earpieces Mr. Stark sent for each of you were custom designed to block out the offending frequency. So long as you continue to wear them, you have nothing to worry about.” 

“And if we had to deal with it the old fashioned way?” Natasha asks. 

“I wouldn’t advise it,” JARVIS says. 

“Is it just the one?” Buffy asks. She feels like an outsider, chiming in, but she needs to know. “Have they made more of these things?”

“We can’t be totally sure,” JARVIS says. “HYDRA has been known to store its research in hard copy and on local drives. But based on my preliminary research via their network, it looks as though they have not yet managed to reproduce Mr. Stark’s work.” 

“Here’s hopin’,” Buffy says. 

Once the strategy questions are answered, they get through the discussion of armor, weapons, and the rendezvous point. Soon, they’re done, and JARVIS disconnects, leaving them with instructions to reach him. As it turns out, all of their magical custom earpieces also link right to him, so if anyone has a question they can pop one in and talk without even dialing a number.

Assuming that JARVIS can _really_ be trusted not to go all _HAL-9000_ , she might need to get Willow to think more about the tech angle. The app was a good start, but this level of prep was… 

Well, almost enough to make her not worried about all the dudes with guns possibly shooting at her. She really, really would prefer not to get shot again.

By early evening Sam and Natasha leave too. It’s only after that it occurs to Buffy that they’re probably both jet lagged, from opposite ends of the world. Once they’re gone, Steve sits at the table, hunkered down and looking focused, although there’s not much else to do that she can see.

Maybe he likes to think through every contingency. 

That’s never been her style; she’s always been a better fighter in the moment. She adapts. But she also understands how much taking up that mantle of _leader_ can change things. The only times she’d stayed up all night planning for every angle were times when she was leading _others_ into battle.

“Anything you want to talk through?” she asks.

He focuses on her for a second, and his gaze is warm. “Not right now. I’m memorizing the floor plan of the base and the map of the surrounding area. Then I’m going to read through the details of the research JARVIS did on their acquired tech.”

“Let me know if you want any help.”

“Thank you. You’ve done more than enough already, Buffy.” 

It doesn’t quite feel that way, so she cleans up a bit. She moves the uncomfortable sofa back where it had been originally, leaves the dirty dishes for room service in the hall, picks up the clothes she’d left on the floor. Steve thanks her for that, too, but then goes back to looking at his phone, at the tiny text she suspects has been sent over by JARVIS.

After she’s done cleaning, she takes a shower. Then, clearly, it’s TV time. 

“Do you mind if I have the TV on in the other room?” she asks him. “I don’t want to distract you and your super hearing.”

“That’s not a problem,” he says, nearly as polite as JARVIS.

“Oh, and, I’m going to order us something to eat,” she says. “No arguments, mister.”

“That sounds good.”

Not wanting to press him further, she duplicates their lunch order. He eats at the table, sketching more details on his map in between bites. She leaves him to it and lounges, watching Lucy reruns and trying not to get crumbs on the duvet. After, she leaves the new dishes out for room service too, then washes up and brushes her teeth.

It’s actually night time, now. 

She’s considering just going to bed, but she steps into the doorway and looks at Steve again and -- 

Super or not, he looks tired. His face is drawn, eyelids a little heavy. He still looks gorgeous -- and maybe someone who didn’t know him wouldn’t be able to tell -- but she does know him now, kind of. And compared to how he looked when they met, this is bigtime fatigue. 

It also occurs to her that this is their third night here, and unless she’s very much mistaken, he hasn’t slept since they arrived. 

She approaches him, and he looks up as she casts a shadow over the table. His phone is face down now, and the pencil rests next to his hands, clasped in front of him.

“C’mon,” she says, and tugs at his shirt. 

“Where--”

“Big battle time tomorrow. Sleep tonight.” 

“I’m fine,” he says. “I’ll get a little rest on the--”

“World’s least comfortable sofa?” She shakes her head. “Overruled. I need you at your best tomorrow if you’re going to help me not be swiss cheese.”

He furrows his brow for a second until his expression clears. 

“I’m not going to let anyone hurt you,” he says. 

“Ditto,” she says. “Including my good friend Steve who is trying to deprive you of sleep.” She pauses, and can see he’s starting to fold. “Let’s go. Or do we have to really see who’s stronger?” 

He exhales a small laugh and stands, stretching out his arms and shaking his head. 

“The sofa is good for me, trust me, I’ve had much worse --”

“Steve.” She turns around and faces him, her back to the doorway of the bedroom, and for a second he looks startled to have her suddenly so close. “If you’re not comfortable sharing the bed with me, I’m not going to pressure you. But it does seem like you haven’t slept in three days, and I’d really prefer that you’re well rested before we do this thing tomorrow. That’s all I’m asking.” 

His eyes shift from her to the space behind her - the bedroom. 

“The over-under covers thing?” he asks. It sounds sort of tentative, like he hasn’t seen what this is firsthand but has made an educated guess.

“You can even take over, since I know you’re too much of a gentleman to tolerate me doing it.”

He exhales, and moves quietly towards the closet, grabbing a fresh t-shirt and then making his way to the bathroom. 

Buffy lifts the corner of the covers, sitting on the edge of the bed and pushing her legs underneath. Then she shuts out the light. It’s exciting, having him right in the bathroom, knowing he’s going to come over and lie down next to her. It gets her heart beating fast, but in that innocent way that reminds her of the first time her crush slept over (even if her crush had been a 240 year old vampire). And, yeah, she just said she didn’t want to pressure him, and she doesn’t, but there’s something about _winning_ at that request. He’s kind of a shy guy, fearless leader or not. He’s proper in a way that some guys are -- and in the way she suspects not all guys were even back in the 40s.

He wouldn’t say yes unless he wanted to. She wonders if his heart is racing too.

Actually, it’s not really playing well with the whole _sleep_ plan, actually. And when he returns, in his fresh white t-shirt and sweats, backlit from the bathroom until he shuts the light off, she wonders if she might have just sacrificed _her_ night of sleep before the big battle.

She feels the bed dip as he lies down. She clears her throat. “There’s -- um -- a throw blanket in the closet, I think. If you’re cold.”

“I’m fine,” Steve says, his voice a low hum. There’s a little rasp to it she hasn’t heard before.

“Steve?” she asks. She wants to keep him talking all night. It’s been hours since they trained, and though they’ve been together all day, so much of it was battle strategy it’s almost like -- she misses him.

“Yes?”

Talking all night would defeat the purpose. 

“Goodnight,” she says. 

“Goodnight, Buffy.”

She closes her eyes, listening to the sound of her own breathing. Steve’s is too quiet to make out. She works to calm her mind and, eventually, she falls asleep.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to @crazygirlne for the beta!
> 
> Thanks to everyone who commented. We are nearing the end of this story! I hope you're still enjoying it. :)

It’s a good plan. Not foolproof, but nothing ever is. 

Steve can’t be sure whether Raphael warned HYDRA about them, but he doesn’t think so. The man -- vampire -- had seemed so aloof about the work he was doing. Unlike most of the operatives Steve had come across, Raphael hadn’t demonstrated any loyalty. No threats, no “Hail HYDRA,” none of it.

Still, you never know. 

But there’s something reassuring in knowing he’ll have five suits in the sky, Sam covering his six, Tasha handling security, and Buffy at his side. 

It’s not the Avengers, exactly, but this team is just as much _his_. 

By the time Buffy is getting ready to sleep, he’s done everything he can think to do in his planning and sits idly, waiting for the time to pass or another idea to emerge. It isn’t until she insists that he gets some rest that he realizes how tired he really is. 

When he lays next to her, he barely has the energy to worry if he’ll snore before he falls asleep.

\--

His eyes snap open. He’s on his back and he isn’t sure what time it is. The light is obscured by the heavy hotel curtains, outlined in a silver that could be streetlights or the dawn. He turns his head, intending to find the nightstand on Buffy’s side where the little alarm clock sits, and is surprised to find her watching him instead. 

“Hey,” she says. (It’s 5:15AM, he can see it over her shoulder. There’s a little bit of time before they have to go.)

“I thought you sleep in,” he replies, shifting his position so he’s on his back again, slightly more upright. His voice is softer, rougher than he intends it to be. 

“Not always,” she says.

He’s not sure what else to say after that, what kind of small talk someone might make when they wake up next to a pretty lady. He should be thinking about the mission, about the rendezvous, about breaking into HYDRA, but -- he’s not. 

He’s still on top of the blankets, and she’s wrapped up under them, lying on her side facing him with eyes that are heavy-lidded from sleep. He can just make it out in the faint silvery light. It’s something he’s never seen before: the eyes, the mussed hair tied in a high knot at the top of her head, one cheek darker from laying on it (he supposes). He’s never entered that space where a woman is usually alone, and he finds himself struggling to know what to do next. 

He sees her expression cloud as he watches her (maybe he was staring too long?) and she moves a hand to her hair. “I’m sure it looks like I have a bird’s nest on my head.”

“No. I just--” He stops. Doesn’t know how to admit that this is new to him, doesn’t know what to say, or what she’ll think. So he says what comes to mind next instead. “You look beautiful.”

“Oh,” she says, like she’s surprised. 

There’s a moment of silence between them, and he’s concerned that maybe he said the wrong thing -- that he was too forward. But then she scoots closer to him and asks, “Can I?” 

He’s not sure what she’s asking permission for, but he nods. A small smile finds its way onto her face and she moves even closer, still under the covers, as she places her head at the spot between his chest and his shoulder. She fits there perfectly.

“Did you sleep?” she asks. 

“Yeah,” he says. “You?” 

“Yeah. The night before a battle isn’t ever really a good night of sleep, but it was…” She looks up at him, and he holds her glance. “It was nice. Not being alone.”

He knows what she means. 

Steve can’t see her face now but he can feel her breath on his chest, warm even through the fabric of his t-shirt, and he lets his hand curl on her arm. If her hair were untied, he’d be fighting himself not to touch, so that’s one small favor. 

He lets himself drift with this feeling for a moment, a small, warm presence at his side. He’s surprised when she starts to speak. 

“When we activated the girls, we didn’t know it was going to work,” she says. 

He listens. 

“It was a hail Mary. We’d been training them, but they were just regular teenagers -- I might as well have been teaching an aerobics class. And then I took fifteen of them down with me into the mouth of hell, into an army of -- vicious, ancient monsters. Much stronger than the vampires you’ve seen. We lost good people that day.” She pauses. “It was a miracle we didn’t lose everyone.” 

She takes a second, adjusting her position, maybe burrowing into him a little deeper.

“If we’d lost,” she continues, “That would’ve been it. Not for us, but for -- for good. The whole world. I’d fought like that before. More than once. World ending stuff. The stakes are always high, but -- not like that. Walking in with nothing but these young girls I knew stood no chance against what we were fighting.” 

He doesn’t know how to respond.

“I guess I’m saying that today-- it’s new to me. And it’s a little scary, knowing there are armed humans there, because half the time they do more damage than vampires. And jerks with guns? Having a strong left hook doesn’t stop them. But… this isn’t my worst.” 

He gets it now. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. 

“I understand what you mean,” he says.

They fall silent again for a moment, and he gives in to the urge to let his hand run through her hair, brushing gently from temple to where it’s tied at the top of her head, careful not to tangle. 

“What was yours?” she asks, voice soft. 

“My--?”

“Your worst.”

He doesn’t have to think hard. 

“New York.” 

“Oh.” She sounds chagrined. “Yeah, I mean, that was stupid of me.”

“No,” he says. “It’s not stupid. I saw a lot in the war, and some of it came close. And when I went down in the ice, it was--” He stops. “Let’s just say I won’t be deep sea diving any time soon. But it’s like you said. New York was different. The casualties. The damage. The stakes. Working to protect all those people, knowing I couldn’t…” 

“Yeah,” she says on a sigh. There’s a quality to it that makes him think there’s something she’s leaving unsaid.

“What is it?” he asks.

“It’s nothing,” she says, but by her tone, stifled and sad, he can tell it’s a lie.

“You don’t have to talk about it.”

He can feel her torso rise with a deep breath. She lets it out, then speaks. 

“We lost three girls in the Battle of New York,” she says. “Two were on the ground assisting in an evacuation when the building collapsed and one was hit by Chitauri fire.”

His heart sinks. She’d never push the blame to him, but in Steve’s mind those were three more that he couldn’t quite save. 

“I wasn’t even there,” she says, “But New York makes my top ten. I mean, we’ve lost people before, but watching it on tv, knowing I couldn’t get over there soon enough to help, and that I had twenty girls on the ground, most of whom were newbies--” She stops, lets out a groan. “Okay. Stop. God, Buffy, why are you talking about this?”

“Hey. It’s good to talk,” Steve says simply.

“So they say,” she says, “But despite the last thirty seconds of word vomit I can promise you it’s not usually my style.”

“I can’t imagine what it was like to watch and not be able to help.”

There’s another pause.

“I said it’s like I’m a consultant now, but -- I help with the big stuff. Always have, always will. But we had no way of knowing that one was coming.”

How could they have? And while he hates the thought of Buffy or another slayer on the ground somewhere at the next big fight, he can also see she won’t be the type to stand idly by. 

“Next time, you’ll know,” he says.

She lifts her head up and looks at him -- he can feel her stare -- so he glances down, meeting her gaze. 

“Thank you,” she says.

It starts to sink in that she’s very close, silly as that sounds (of course she’s close, she had been resting her head on him). It makes him think of the day before, what it felt like to be so near her then, to see a look on her face that seemed to want more. Maybe that look is back again, or something like it, stretching between them in the quiet of the room. Only this time, she’s pressed to his side, too, open to him. Ready to fight with him, but keeping the quiet part of her right here.

“Steve?” she asks, but it’s like a sound that’s faded, coming to him in disparate parts, or maybe from another room. 

He leans in and presses his lips to hers. 

Her reaction is immediate, craning her neck further to get closer to him, and pressing a hand to his cheek. Otherwise, this kiss is gentle, soft and rich, a slow journey. They break away, looking at each other, before she leans up towards him again, taking charge this time. He can feel her press her whole body closer, then stop herself, putting, if not space between them, then the illusion of it, staying where she is and not moving closer. 

He wants her closer. His head is swimming. The sensation of soft lips, heat pressing into his side, her hand scratching patterns into his scalp and pulling him closer before finding restraint -- it tears at his own. He feels his body start to warm, imagines himself turning over, pulling her underneath him, what it would be like, knowing he could lose himself a little without hurting her--

His phone beeps on the nightstand, a shrill sound signaling 5:30am.

They break away. Buffy sits, looking first at her nightstand for the clock, and then towards his phone, which is far out of her reach on his opposite side. He swallows, sitting up and turning off the alarm. A dull pounding in his ears eventually registers as his heartbeat.

“Do we need to--?” Her voice is a question, but they both know the answer. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Time to go.”

She nods, sitting up fully, turning on the bedside lamp, and tossing the covers aside. Both cheeks are now tinged pink, he notices as she gets up, and he lets himself have a moment to calm down before he follows.

Buffy walks to the other room, grabbing the black armor that Tony sent and heading into the bathroom with it. Steve locates his own uniform at the bottom of his luggage. 

A few minutes later, he’s in the parlor in the suit, double-checking each weapon and component, locating their ear pieces, and taking a last long look at his hand-drawn map (though he’s memorized it already). 

A shadow appears from the bedroom and he looks up to find Buffy watching him. Staring, really. She’s dressed in her cream colored sweater and black pants. A bolt of alarm shoots through him.

“Buffy--” 

She lifts up the bottom hem of the sweater, revealing more black. It’s the armor, underneath. 

“Will this work?” she asks. “I know I don’t look as official as you do, but this is really more my style.”

Camouflage isn’t really the goal, and it doesn’t look like the sweater will catch on anything, so --

“It works,” he says.

It’s almost time. He grabs his shield. 

\--

She should’ve grabbed a granola bar or something. 

Then again, she was a little distracted. Between the smoochies and finally seeing him in the whole Cap getup (maybe Xander had a point). Not to mention the actual task at hand. But she reassures herself: it’s not like she’d still be thinking about her stomach once they got into the thick of it. 

They leave on foot, the morning streets quiet and empty, and Steve locates a motorcycle in an old SHIELD safe house a half a mile away. They don’t talk during the walk, and she knows she should be trying to focus on the Big Evil instead of replaying the morning in her mind, but that’s an exercise in futility.

Was he going to regret that kiss? 

Well, not the kiss itself, which was pretty darned dreamy as far as Buffy was concerned. 

But the idea of the kissing. Or possibly the option for more kissing.

And did she?

Because when it came right down to it, after this was all over, he had a gig, and she had a gig, and they didn’t exactly live in the same world.

So what was the plan going to be, with them?

The thoughts circle. When they get on the bike, it presents an easy excuse to cling a little closer and just enjoy for now. She rests her head on the surprisingly soft fabric of his uniform (is it leather?). There’s no use in talking, anyway, with the roar of the bike and the helmet blocking the wind. It’s a long ride, at least half an hour, but eventually they’re out of the city and circling the border of the large park.

She has to grab on a little tighter when he cuts right into it, riding faster than Buffy would know how through the grass and between the trees. She hadn’t paid much attention to where the rendezvous point was going to be -- she didn’t need to, but in the abstract, meeting in the center of the park had seemed more, well, normal.

Soon, he comes to a stop and cuts the motor. The dawn is just starting to tickle the edge of the sky, but in the park it’s hardly noticeable other than the subtle glow above the trees. He shoots Buffy a glance, then pulls the cowl over his head. Ahead, she can see Natasha, standing with arms folded, face stony.

A low whistling sound is all she hears before Sam lands between them, his wings glinting red and silver in the low light and folding up into something no larger than a backpack.

Steve speaks low, but his voice is clear in her earpieces. 

“JARVIS?” 

“Good morning, Captain Rogers.” JARVIS’s voice is clear and as pleasant as ever. “I’ve surrounded the perimeter. As we expected from the GeoData, there are indeed several well-disguised turrets set around the borders of the base, suggesting that whether or not they have airborne offenses, they are certainly thinking about the air defensively.”

“Any sign that they know we’re here?” Natasha asks, voice low.

“Not as of yet, Miss Romanov, but there are at least thirty agents inside.”

“More than we expected,” Steve says. 

“Indeed,” JARVIS agrees.

“So we lure some of them out,” Buffy says. 

It’s an easy contingency, one they talked about yesterday, and one she’s done herself more times than she can count. 

“Only after we get inside,” Steve says, tone brokering no argument.

“I can help with that,” a new voice says in her ear. It’s familiar, she can almost place it--

“Tony,” Steve says before she can think of it. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Right. That would make sense. 

“And why am I not surprised that you skipped all the prep work?” Natasha says as the Iron Man suit lands with a quiet thud a few feet away. 

Even in the dim light, the red and gold are brighter in person than they looked on TV -- or maybe the suit just looks a little different than she expected. It’s more lithe and less bulky, though the glowing circle in the chest looks the same.

“J filled me in,” Tony says. “And, anyway, I’m _not_ really here.” The face plate opens; it’s empty inside. From wherever he really is, he shuts it again. “Consider me a very advanced video conference.”

“What is it you were going to help with?” Buffy asks. “Getting us in or luring people out?”

“Both. Pleasure to meet you, by the way. Buffy, right?” Tony pauses for barely a second. “Here’s the deal: Thanks to my deeply impressive dig into HYDRA’s security system, the northwest entrance will be unlocked in ten minutes. Get in and we’ll create a distraction on the Southeast side.” 

“Understood,” Steve says. He turns to Sam. “You’re physically here. They’re not. Focus on neutralizing the agents that Tony and JARVIS lure out, but if fire gets too heavy, prioritize getting away. JARVIS, your priority is eliminating those turrets and covering Sam. The rest of the plan stays the same. Understood?” 

“Roger,” says Sam. 

“Then we’re ready. Avengers?” Steve says. “Assemble.”

\--

Buffy, Steve, and Natasha make their way to the northwest entrance. Buffy would have had to play the “sun-comes-up-in-the-East-so-this-must-be-West” game, but Steve naturally has both his cardinal directions and the layout of the base memorized, so there’s no need.

Since the base is underground, the walk is more like the world’s weirdest early morning hike, and although she’s spent the last several days getting to know Steve, there’s a moment of surreality that creeps in, stalking through an empty park outside of Paris at 6:30am with two superheroes in spandexy bodysuits.

Then again, she’s wearing one too. 

When they reach the entrance, a discrete metal door in the side of a small hill, Steve announces it on the comms and shoots Natasha a look indicating that she should be ready to go first. Buffy gets the distinct sense that Steve is keeping her in a protective position.

On the one hand, Buffy can absolutely respect that this isn’t her fight and that she has far less experience in this one area than the rest of the team. 

On the other hand, she is so not used to being treated with kid gloves when defeating Big Evil. 

But then, the phrase ‘pick your battles’ comes to mind. Literally, here.

“Open… sesame,” rings through the comms and she gets the impression that Tony is showing off. 

The door clicks open, but at the opposite end of the park, Buffy can see the Iron Man suit blasting a bright path across the sky, blaring music she’s not sure whether she’s hearing through her ear pieces, outside, or both.

“Buffy,” Steve says, and she jolts. A buzzing starts through the earpieces -- it must be the counter-frequency. Steve’s waiting, giving her a small nod once she follows. Natasha’s already ahead.

They round the first corner, then the second, and onto the third before they find agents, but when they do, Buffy counts five of them, thoroughly blocking their way to the next passage. 

Natasha’s on two of them quickly, pulling out weapons that look like long, thin batons. Steve aims his attention at the two brandishing their guns. That leaves Buffy just one to herself. 

“We don’t have to do this,” she says to him. 

He doesn’t bother with a reply, rushing towards her to grab her. She lets him, then twists around, grabbing him by his upper arms and easily throwing him over her and into the wall. He lands in a heap, but he’s still conscious, breathing heavily. 

“Please stay down,” she says.

She’s not used to fighting human. Something they didn’t train for yesterday was moderating her strength to the exact level that it needs to be to subdue someone less-than-super. She doesn’t want to end up permanently injuring someone. They should have practiced it; she has no doubt that Steve has it down. 

The man stands, ready to attack again, but with one arm bracing against the wall like he’s dizzy. Buffy can hear the scrambling behind her, doesn’t want to miss their moment to keep moving, so she sighs and throws a halfway decent punch. 

He crumples, unconscious. 

Hopefully not too injured. 

When she turns, she only has a moment to take in Natasha’s fighting style -- it’s visceral. More wrestling than fisticuffs, the way she dances around them and pulls them to the floor with her legs, then knocks them out with the batons or stuns them with a small electroshocker on her palm. It’s immediately obvious: it would be hard to fight Natasha, even if you were stronger. 

Steve is Steve, and fights these guys with the same sort of punch and shield style she saw him applying to vampires before she gave him the how-to. And she can see from the clench of his jaw that he’s pulling his punches.

Still, it doesn’t take long.

When all of the agents are dispatched, the three of them make their way farther down the hallway.

At the next break, several more agents flood in, and they bounce back into action. In the close quarters, they naturally form a triangle, backs to each other, bodies pointed out at the enemies coming towards them. Steve seems to be right about the reluctance to shoot, even though some point their guns, and Buffy gets her first real experience disarming someone -- bending back an agent’s arm into an uncomfortable contortion and grabbing it away. She removes the magazine and empties the chamber more smoothly than she expects, tosses it, then knocks him out with an elbow. 

“I’m happy to inform you that I have disabled all of the turrets,” JARVIS says through the comms.

At least thirty agents, and the three of them had taken out around ten so far.

“How many are out there?” Steve asks, echoing her thoughts. 

“Fifteen,” JARVIS says. “But your intuition was correct, Captain. Some are airborne.”

“Sam?” Steve asks.

“Nothing to worry about,” Sam says, voice exhilarated in the comms. “I’m giving them an advanced flying lesson.” There’s a crash in the background.

“JARVIS, what about Strucker?” Natasha asks. 

“There’s no sign of Baron Von Strucker so far.”

“Tell me if that changes,” Natasha says. 

“Of course,” JARVIS replies. 

At the next fork in the road, Natasha goes left and they go right, bidding each other a wordless goodbye. Steve and Buffy make their way down another hall, then find their way to the staircase, blocked off by a heavy metal door. It’s locked. Steve stands back and gives it a solid kick, but it holds.

“Tony?” Steve asks. “The interior stairwell is locked.”

“Busy!” Tony says, the comms abruptly feeding in the cacophony of his surroundings.

“When I get to the controls I’ll be able to fix it,” Natasha says.

Steve takes a breath, posture tense. He’s not good at waiting.

“Together, maybe?” Buffy asks. 

He nods and they stand back, standing just far enough apart so they won’t bump into each other. 

“On three,” Steve says. 

He counts, and for once Buffy doesn’t need to hold back. The door flies off its hinges with a deafening clang. 

She raises her eyebrows. “That kinda worked.”

Steve’s already moving, stepping over the door, and she half expects him to help her over it with an extended hand, but finds herself happier when he doesn’t. 

They climb down as low as the stairs go, making their way with precision thanks to Steve. There aren’t anymore agents down here, whether because they’ve all been lured away, or because this isn’t a part of the facility that’s used very frequently, Buffy isn’t sure.

Finally, they find the room with the tech. It’s more like a large closet, lined with shelves of weapons and alien looking gadgets.

“We’re in,” Steve says, as he walks through the shelves, evaluating. “JARVIS, what’s the view from upstairs?”

“We’re continuing to dismantle HYDRA’s defenses. No signs of any additional strongholds beyond what we were anticipating.”

“And no sign of Strucker either,” Natasha says. 

“What’s with your V for Vendetta with this guy?” Tony asks. “Plenty of Agents of SHIELD were rogue.”

“I’ve got reliable intel that says Strucker has Loki’s scepter.”

“Shit, really?” Tony says, voice hushed. “Does Thor know?”

“Steve, is it down there?” Natasha asks, not answering Tony’s question. 

Steve’s still walking through each shelf, looking carefully, but not touching. It’s all packed in neatly, rows labeled with bar codes like items on the shelf at a very strange store. 

“No scepter,” Steve says.

Buffy doesn’t want to ask the very obvious question of _what’s the big deal with this scepter thing_ over the comms, so she sets her sights on the StarkTech instead. JARVIS had sent a picture to their phones. Small, silver and red, kind of like a big laser pointer. She walks slowly, looking at each row of catalogued equipment.

She finds it, picks it up, fighting the irrational urge to press the button.

“We’re clear up here,” Sam says over the comms. “That was fun. Remind me to take a vacation more often.”

“I have the StarkTech,” she says. “Any objections to me destroying it?”

“Please, go right ahead,” Tony says. 

She shrugs and crushes it in her first. 

“Easy peasy,” she says to herself. 

“JARVIS? Tony?” Steve asks. “What else needs to be destroyed?” 

“Captain, the rest of the inventory are items which we were aware HYDRA had in its possession. That said, there’s nothing that needs to be salvaged,” says JARVIS.

“Is anything explosive or volatile?”

“Not unless you plan to use flames,” JARVIS says.

“Good enough for me,” Steve says, taking his shield off of his back. “Buffy?”

“Vacating. You gonna do a trick?”

He’s not exactly the jokey chatty type during a mission, but she thinks she sees him smiling as they leave the room. She gives him some additional space and he does what she expects, letting the shield rip and sending it smashing through the room, then catching it effortlessly. The beautifully neat shelves fall, and Steve turns, leaving the equipment in broken piles. 

“Gosh,” Buffy says, tone dry. “We can’t take you anywhere.”

“Like a bull in a China shop,” Steve agrees.

She bites back a grin. His grace, his confidence, the way he holds himself in the uniform, it’s distracting. She thinks of their kiss suddenly, unavoidably, with a pang. But then another pang follows, that feeling of uncertainty. Because what now? She remembers promising herself never to have another office romance. 

“Up and out, you two,” Tony says. “We’ve got things to discuss.”

Boy, do they ever.

“Ready when you are,” Buffy says.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks @crazygirlne for the read through before I posted!
> 
> This story is nearly over - I hope you enjoy how things wrap up!

They call in the authorities; in this case, DGSI, the French intelligence agency. Steve just has to hope that HYDRA doesn’t have roots there, too, or the agents they just dispatched will only scatter to the next base.

To be sure _this_ base is well and truly done, JARVIS and Tony shut it all down on their way out, something about a bug they planted that will destroy the infrastructure and cut everything from their records to their security systems to their tap water. 

After, the group makes their way back to the hotel suite, ready to debrief over omelettes and platters of French cheese and petits four. 

Buffy, Natasha, Sam, and he are seated at the table, with Tony on an actual video conference at the far corner, looking tired and manic and oil streaked. Then again, it’s the middle of the night there. 

Steve is across from Buffy, which means he can watch her discreetly, the way her hands play idly with the too-long sleeves of her sweater in between bites of petits four. They’re tiny things, those hands. Gentle in his hair and on his cheek, but deadly, too. 

There will be more missions after this. More responsibility. More _Avengers Assemble._

There’d been rumors of Loki’s scepter disappearing after SHIELD fell, and, now underground, Nick and Maria had made it their mission to figure out where it had gone. But until today, there had been nothing concrete that Steve had been made aware of. 

Those tiny, deadly hands could help too, maybe. If she wanted. 

His thoughts seem to hit a wall, then reverse. 

Or would that be bad for the mission? For his focus, or his ability to make the tough choices? If they were… something, even a hint of something, maybe it was his responsibility to keep that separate.

He sighs, resolving to focus on the matter in front of him for now. 

“What did Fury and Hill tell you about Strucker?” Tony asks Natasha.

“Nothing,” she says. “I haven’t had a direct line on Fury since he went underground. He gets in touch when he needs to. I got my intel somewhere else.”

“Can you tell us more about what you learned?” Steve asks, not bothering to ask Natasha for her source of information.

She nods, putting her espresso cup down on the table. “The amulet, the StarkTech — that was just a way to branch out into other black market networks until he could find what he wanted,” she says. “The scepter was always the goal.”

“HYDRA didn’t secure it when SHIELD fell?” Sam asks.

“It came up unaccounted for.” Natasha quirks a brow. “Even a HYDRA agent can see an opportunity to turn something around for a buck.”

“And now Strucker has it. What’s he going to do with it?” Buffy asks. 

“Don’t know,” Natasha says. “But it has a lot of power. Leading up to New York, Loki used it to put people under his control. He got everything he needed to open that portal by compromising our agents.” Her voice is still dark with the remnants of anger for what Loki did to Clint, but Steve is grateful for her forethought, taking a moment to explain the context to Buffy.

“Is Strucker into mind control, then?” Buffy asks. 

Natasha tilts her head, considering. “It’s possible.”

“They’re _HYDRA_ ,” Tony says. “All they do is infiltrate organizations and convert people. They’re basically the Borg. No way does he need something like that just for mind control.”

“Then what would he want?” Sam asks. 

“I have a guess,” Buffy says, face in a thoughtful frown. “You say HYDRA already has numbers, loyalty, infiltration into all kinds of gnarly places… What don’t they have? Actual power. Out in the open. And what’s standing in the way of that?” She pauses for a second, but no one jumps to answer. “Judging by the severely mismatched takedown I just witnessed this morning, he probably wants to focus on defeating you guys.”

“What, he’s gonna use the scepter on the Avengers?” Sam asks.

“It worked for Loki,” Natasha says. “To a point.”

“That’s different,” Tony says. “Loki’s a god. Strucker couldn’t come physically close to any of us without getting his ass handed to him, even with that scepter.”

“Does he have someone who could?” Buffy asks. 

“What, someone who can match us?” Tony asks.

“Like an enhanced?” Steve asks.

“Maybe. Someone strong enough to come at you with it. Or! Someone he could scepter first, put the whammy on, and then send after you,” she says. 

“Not that we know of with the Winter Soldier deactivated,” Natasha says, shooting Steve an apologetic glance. “If he had the scepter _and_ someone he could trust to use it in a fight against us, he wouldn’t be hiding.”

“True,” Sam says. 

“What about making, um, _enhanced_ people?” Buffy asks, making a face at the word ‘enhanced.’ “Or finding more of them?” 

“Well, everyone’s always trying to make more like Cap,” Tony says nonchalantly. “It hasn’t gone great historically.”

“Wait.” Buffy’s eyes widen. “Do they know about slayers?”

“About all of you? Unlikely,” Natasha says, voice certain. 

“Vampires, they know about,” Tony says. That much was clear from their relationship with Raphael. “They only have record of there being a single slayer.”

Steve can see the gears turning behind Tony’s eyes.

“But you’re right,” Tony continues, “That _is_ a liability. The information is out there if you know where to look. Now you’ve been seen with us, and if anyone who saw how you fight decides to look into ‘enhanced tiny chicks,’ it’s possible they’ll find out there are more of you. How many slayers are there?” 

“A few hundred,” Buffy says. “I’ll get the word out to the girls to look out for the scepter, Strucker, the whole deal. Capital letters: avoid, bigtime.”

“Not too much information,” Steve says, meeting her eyes. “Just warn them about the scepter.”

He doesn’t want to say it in front of everyone, but she’s mentioned to him how there have been rogue slayers here and there, and the last thing they need is one of them seeking HYDRA out. Her look turns thoughtful, then knowing, and he thinks they’re on the same page.

“You’re right,” she says. “Less is more.” 

“Tony, you got into HYDRA’s data,” Steve says. “Do you know how many bases have records showing Strucker’s presence in the last three months?” 

“JARVIS?” Tony asks. 

“Captain,” the AI says, his voice ringing even clearer than Tony’s from the laptop. “From the data that I’ve extracted, Strucker has entered the facilities at three bases other than Paris: Kreischberg, Belgrade, and Sokovia.”

Kreischberg -- it hits him with a pang, making his stomach flip. He’d shut down that base in the 40s. Going there was the genesis of the Howling Commandos. Yet here it was again, like an infestation that wouldn’t disappear. 

“So, three to go,” Natasha says, tone casual. She grabs a piece of cheese off the platter and pops it into her mouth. 

“I’m going to get a line out to Jane Foster,” Tony says. “Thor’s going to want to know about this.”

“Talk to Bruce, too,” Steve says. “We won’t put him in unless we absolutely have to, but their response to us may escalate. We have maybe one more before they realize what we’re after.”

Tony nods, then lets out a sigh. “I’d better talk to Pep as well. There’s more I can do in person.” 

“Coming out of retirement?” Sam asks. 

“I’ll let you know,” Tony says. “Assuming Pepper doesn’t murder me as soon as I bring it up.”

“Thank you, Tony,” Steve says. “Let’s give it forty-eight hours for us to regroup with the others and then we’ll meet up again here.”

“Steve--” Sam interjects. 

“I know.” Steve says. Sam can’t stay -- at least not past the weekend, and not deeper into this mission and across Europe. “You’ve got other important work to be doing. I’ll call you if we need more manpower than we have.”

“Appreciate it, man.”

Buffy, meanwhile, has a strange look on her face, like she’s debating raising a hand and stating something about her own availability, but is thinking better of it in front of the group. When their eyes meet, she looks even more confused. 

“For now,” Steve says, making eye contact with Tony on the video instead. “Get Thor and Bruce advised of the situation. And please get some sleep.” 

“Aye aye, captain,” Tony says, and the video disconnects. 

\--

Sam and Natasha leave soon after. 

Sam’s headed back to DC, either tonight or tomorrow morning, depending on when he can get a flight. It’s bittersweet. They’d had a lot of time together, aimless, failing to track Bucky across Europe, and now when they actually have a solid mission, Sam’s time is spoken for. But it’s the right thing to do. Some things are more important.

Natasha is back at her own hotel after assuring them she had a few other items to follow-up on that would be better seen to alone. He ignores her knowing look as she leaves, pushing down the question in his mind of whether or when he’ll have to tell Buffy that their first meeting was a setup. 

That just leaves him and Buffy. 

They sit across from each other at the table, too quiet.

“I like them,” she says, after a moment. “They’re real solid hero types.”

“They are.”

“I hope I wasn’t asking too many questions.”

“You were great. You thought of a few things I didn’t. Not everyone can do that.”

They fall into silence again. It’s not uncomfortable, exactly, but it’s… loaded.

Buffy folds her arms. “So, the mission. That was…” She trails off, then starts again. “Different.”

“Bad different?” 

“Not bad. But different.” 

He remembers what it was like, sitting in the Slayer HQ and listening to Buffy and her friends discuss demon banishment while portioning out spell ingredients. He can relate.

“It’s like trying to fight the government or something,” she says. “The individuals might be way easier to punch because, y’know, human. But the sheer scope of it all…” She shakes her head. “HYDRA’s all over the world. It didn’t really sink in until you started talking about the next three bases.”

“You’re right,” Steve says. “I’ve been fighting HYDRA for almost seventy years. They’re still here.”

“I guess I get the name thing now. With the head chopping and three new ones growing.”

Steve crosses his legs at the ankle, looking down at where his hands are folded on the table. They speak at the same time.

“I’m not expecting you to--”

“I just can’t see myself--”

He stops. She does too. He can hear where she was going with that, and it’s a sad little jolt for him, even though he was going to say the same thing.

“Go ahead,” he says. 

“It’s like Tony said,” she says. “I’m a liability. You have more than enough firepower even without bringing in the rest of the Avengers, and if those HYDRA guys find out there are hundreds of powered women, a bigger-than-zero fraction of whom could be persuaded to join -- that would be a disaster. Not to mention the mind control. Mind controlled slayers would be -- _world-ending_ deadly. It’s--”

“Too much,” he guesses.

“No! It’s not that,” she says. “I mean, looking at today -- I’ve had much worse. It’s not too scary. It’s not too hard. It’s just--” 

She stops. He‘s quiet, letting her think. 

“I _have_ a mission already. A sacred birthright. I’m not alone in it anymore, but it’s _mine_. And I have a lot of people depending on me. Who expect me to come when they call.” She pauses. “I mean, even if I knew that moonlighting as an Avenger wouldn’t ever put my girls in danger from HYDRA, it’s also just not… me. Leaving the girls and my friends would be irresponsible.”

He knows she’s right. If she called asking him to join the slayers, he’d have no choice but to say no. They were each responsible for a team.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“No, there’s nothing to be sorry about. Of course you’re welcome to help as long as it feels right to you, but -- you’re right. You have other responsibilities.” He looks away from her. “Maybe it’s better, in a way.”

“Right!” Her voice is overly cheerful. “Better. Exactly.”

“Less potential for… distraction.”

“It’s -- the sensible thing to do,” she says. 

“And I know how to reach you if there’s a true emergency.”

“Sure, me and the girls, all the help you need.” She shifts in her seat. “And, same. We’ll stay in touch. And-- if we need each other--”

“We’ll call,” he says. 

“Exactly.”

Silence falls between them again, thick in the room. He thinks of their kiss that morning, wonders if she’s doing the same. What was there to say about it now?

“So I guess I’ll just get cleaned up,” she says. “And start looking into, y’know. Trains back to London.” 

She stands and stretches. He watches the line of it, her fists curled and her back arched into a curve he can see even through her thick sweater. She finds his gaze right at the end -- he’s caught -- and there’s something in her expression that changes as she watches him right back. He sees her try to shake it off, to refocus on her next steps. 

When she walks by him, aiming for the bedroom (he presumes), he grabs her hand. 

He’s not sure why. 

Parting ways now as friends would be the best possible way to put his focus where it needs to be. But there’s something about her expression, and about knowing they’d be having a different conversation if they weren’t both so _responsible_. Somehow, it makes him do exactly what he shouldn’t. 

She stops, and her fingers curl around his, the slow stroke lighting sparks along his spine that drift up into his scalp. She’s so small that even though he’s sitting he’s nearly her height. He tugs on her hand, and she takes a step closer, leaning over him. Her eyes are huge and hazel-green and so uncertain, even as he moves his other hand to the back of her neck and pulls her down for a kiss. 

She kisses him back, her lips soft and a little sweet from the petits four, her hair falling onto his neck and shoulder. She lets the kiss linger, but doesn’t deepen it. Instead, after a moment, she pulls back, resting her forehead on his. 

“What are we doing?” she asks. 

“Being irresponsible,” he says, and kisses her again.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for coming along for the ride and I hope you enjoyed! Special thanks to @crazygirlne for all the prereading for me.

Later, Buffy will wonder how she let this happen again. The whole impossible relationship thing. There were well-logicked arguments and deep insights into who she is as a person and a leader. 

And then there was Steve’s hand in hers, pulling her closer, and it was too easy to forget about all of the reasons they’d have to say goodbye and just… be.

Steve seems content to do nothing but keep kissing her like this, a hand slowly traveling to her hair, the other still grasping her hand, until she kicks an ankle around the leg of his chair and pulls it out from under the table in one smooth motion. His eyes snap open and he breaks their kiss -- he’s a champion, he can’t help it, sudden movements and all -- and then they stay with her as she tentatively throws a leg over him to sit astride him. 

“Is this okay?” she asks. 

She can see him think about it and he nods, not speaking. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she leans back in, letting herself give into the temptation to take the lead. Before long, she’s pressing herself closer to him, combing her fingers through his hair. They stay like this for long minutes, their kisses growing deeper. His hands settle on her lower back, almost motionless, even as she can feel the rest of him responding to her, feel his warm breath hit her ear when they break away. She gets the sudden sense that he’s not sure about the etiquette for feeling someone up while making out with them. 

It’s kind of adorable, but she wants more. So she kisses him one more time and moves off of him, stepping back. He looks like he’s waiting for a cue.

“Up, please?” she asks, and as he stands, watching her with heated but uncertain eyes. She takes off her sweater. She’s too warm anyway. 

Earlier, it felt silly to be in a catsuit. Now, with the way he’s looking at her, it’s not so bad. 

She goes in for another kiss and he has to lean down pretty far to meet her, so she vaults up. He catches her and then there’s yet more kissing. He’s still in the suit, and it’s surprisingly soft under her hands. 

She’s expecting him to take her into the bedroom and lay her down -- or even the table, or the world’s most uncomfortable sofa; those work too. But he holds her easily, pressing his lips gently to hers, then to her jaw, down her neck, and back up, and she realizes that he’s not going to get tired of holding her like this, because he’s got super strength and some sort of infinite patience for making out.

“Bed?” she asks. 

Now, he moves, still trailing kisses along her jawline. When he lays her down, it’s incredibly gentle. She reaches for the zipper at her neck and his expression turns uncertain again. 

It slots into place. Either he’s rusty, or he hasn’t done this before. She lowers her hands from the zip at her neck, sitting up. 

“Are we going too fast?” she asks. 

He looks chagrined, a different sort of flush coming into his cheeks, and he sits beside her on the bed.

“There’s a joke in here somewhere about how irresponsible I’m actually capable of being.”

Buffy has had enough ill-advised, poorly communicated, and later-regretted sex for more than one lifetime. More than that, she cares about Steve, and him being not-quite-at-ease won’t do.

“Steve, there’s time,” she says. “We don’t have to rush. I know it may not feel like it, what with the impending HYDRA-takedown, but there is.”

He swallows visibly. The moment is quieter now and she takes a second to really look at him. The way his eyes seem to phase from blue to green and back, though she can’t pinpoint exactly where. He’s looking away from her, like he’s grappling with what to say next. She lets him think, grabbing his hand in her best guess at showing support.

“I haven’t done... _this_ before,” he says, and meets her eyes. “But I want to."

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. That’s a good starting point. I do too.”

He looks a little relieved, but stays quiet. 

“So then here’s what we do,” she says. “First: we take our time. Second, we focus on having fun. You don’t have to know what you’re doing; I’m going to enjoy it all no matter what. And if you decide you want to slow down, that’s fine too.”

He nods, a little smile tugging at his lips like he’s trying to stop himself from laughing. She didn’t mean to slip into leader-pep-talk-mode but it looks like it was effective at breaking the ice again if nothing else. 

“Okay?” she asks, raising her hands to her zipper again. 

“Can I--” He stops, then says more confidently, “I’d like to do it.” The heat buzzing under her skin, which had lowered to a simmer during their conversation, makes itself known again.

“Yes, please,” she says. 

He unzips her gently, laughing with her as she’s forced to stand to get the zip all the way down to her ankle. It’s messy and not exactly the athletic-super-powered-sex that she’d been imagining, but it’s also fun, which is what she’s aiming for. 

She kicks her suit away, hopping back onto the bed in her bra and undies. He’s staring openly now, eyes moving from her face down to her legs and back up. It makes her want to tackle him, but he’s still in his uniform even if he’s toed off his boots. 

“What about you?” she asks. “I don’t even know how to help. It looks like a single piece that formed around you.”

“It’s... multiple pieces,” he says, a little self-consciously. 

“Please feel free to demonstrate,” she says, scooting back onto the bed so she can watch as he stands. “I’m genuinely confused about how you take that thing off.” 

He doesn’t move. She raises her eyebrows at him, biting her lip to stop her smile.

“It’s an armored vest,” he says, indicating the red-white-and-blue parts over his chest and abdomen with one hand. Moving to stand near the bed, he unclasps something near the neck line. The clasps fall open backwards towards his shoulders and now she can see that the vest is slack enough to pull over his head. Under, there’s a shirt, the blue sleeves with a black undersuit. 

“Ohhh,” she says.

He laughs, shaking his head, before he pulls the shirt off. She laughs too -- taking a moment to appreciate that, hey, Steve’s _fun_ , and easy to talk to, and not freaked out by how strong she is, and a big honkin’ hero to boot with zero dead bodies to account for. She hasn’t had a whole lot of that combination in her love life. 

Once the top half of the uniform is gone, it’s clear that the belt and pants are more straightforward. Now that she can see it up close, there is an element of, _duh_ , of course it’s a separate top and bottom, but maybe she was blinded by the whole Captain America effect when he had the ensemble on. He moves his hands to the buckle and she shakes her head, beckoning him closer with a crook of her finger. 

“My turn,” she says. “C’mere?”

He looks a little red at the tips of his ears as he steps towards her and she moves to the edge of the bed to help. It puts them into an interesting position: her watching him from below as she tugs open the buckle, him watching from above, both ignoring the effect she’s having on him. She wouldn’t mind staying right here and exploring further, but she wants to know he’s comfortable, so she decides to save that idea for another time. 

When he’s unbuttoned and down to his boxer briefs, she gives herself a moment to really check him out and -- well. He’s gorgeous. Big and broad everywhere but his waist, looking shy again as he sits down next to her. They’re both facing the same way, perched on the edge of the bed, feet on the floor. He’s closer to the pillows.

She figures there’s one more thing to cover. “So, there’s irresponsible, and then there’s _irresponsible_ ,” she says. “And it’s probably good to mention that I’m on the pill and… it’s been a long time, for me. I’ve been tested, since, y’know. Last time. Not -- that we have to have a _this time_. It just seemed like the kind of thing we should talk about, before-- Y’know. Do you know?” It occurs to her that ‘the pill’ hadn’t been around in the 40s.

“I know.” He’s looking at her again with that smile. 

“Great,” she says, and pushes him onto his back. He laughs, grabbing her waist, and pulling her down with him.

\--

It turns out he knows how to do more than make out, and he’s a pretty quick study with what he doesn’t know already. 

They don’t break the bed exactly, but they do hear a suspicious snap from inside the tufted headboard. It still seems to be structurally sound, more or less, so Buffy opts to ignore it entirely.

Later, when she’s sprawled out and mid-afternoon sleepy with her head on Steve’s chest, she lets herself think. On the bright side, he isn’t and has never been evil (probably) and, as far as they’re aware, he’s aging like a normal human. Even better, he likes leftover French cheese and omelettes as much as she does -- which means he’s fun to order food with _and_ not so much into a diet of O positive. 

Also, there’s the part where he’s heroic, courageous, a natural leader, and a genuinely kind person. So, she’s now willing to admit that Dawn was right. He’s her type. But even better, he’s somewhere along a relationship continuum of ‘absolutely Buffy’s type’ and ‘excellent progress towards a healthier baseline.’

She’s going to find some way to keep him, her track record be damned. 

He runs his fingers through her hair again, his breathing slow and easy.

“During the war, a lot of the guys had a girl back home,” Steve says. “It was the normal thing. Writing letters, seeing each other on leave. I was always a little jealous, even though the girl I was sweet on was fighting alongside us.”

Buffy smiles, picturing a 1940s army lady fighting with the men. Seems Steve has a type as well.

“Can you tell me a little about her?”

He takes a breath. “Her name is Peggy. She was an agent with the Strategic Scientific Reserve. They were the ones behind Project Rebirth. She was there the day I…” He trails off, but she gets it. “Anyway. They’d been planning to make a whole army like me, and when that didn’t work, they had me doing these shows selling army bonds. She was the one who convinced me I could be more than that. Then she basically delivered me to the first HYDRA base I ever shut down, so I could save Bucky and the others.”

“That’s the friend you’re looking for,” Buffy says, not letting the question creep into her voice. 

“Right. Back then, he was captured by HYDRA.”

“And you and your sweetheart went there and shut it down?”

“I went alone. But she was waiting for us when we got back.” 

She pictures Steve single-handedly tackling the mission they were on this morning and -- it works. HYDRA might be hard to eliminate en masse, but one mission at a time, they were pretty undermatched when it came to Steve.

“After,” Steve continues, “She was back in London, while the Commandos and I were working across Europe.”

“And you didn’t… get to see her on leave?” Buffy asks, trying for subtlety. 

“I thought we had more time. That we could wait until after the war was over.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. I know better now.”

“What, that there’s not going to be an ‘after’?” she guesses. She’s thought the same.

“Not for me.”

“I’m _so_ not the one to be giving advice on this topic, as evidenced by my eighteen years of slayerdom, but: you _can_ walk away. Every friend of yours I met could lead in your place if they had to.”

“You’re right. Maybe someday.”

“Ah, yes. ‘Someday.’ With _that_ , I am very familiar.” She leans up to place a kiss on his jaw. “Well, I can promise I am the world’s worst hypocrite, so feel free to ignore me. The ‘stolen moments’ romance is about as much as I can shoot for. My whole thing is: either I put them in mortal danger or they have a big-deal-gig of their own and possibly a curse to boot.”

“I can relate,” he says.

“At least it’s not just letters and shore leave. Now we have FaceTime and weekend train getaways.” She pushes up to look at him. “Wait. Do you have FaceTime?”

“Um.” Steve furrows his brow in thought. “Skype, I think?”

“I can download that,” she says, satisfied, and settles her head back down. 

They lie in a comfortable silence for a few moments, Steve’s hand drifting from her hair down to her back in a gentle motion that tickles just the right amount and sends warmth through her all over again. She turns, pressing her front into his side, and curling her leg around his. 

“Steve?”

“Yes?” 

“No pressure, but what are your thoughts on stealing another moment right now?” 

He answers by pulling her on top of him.

\--

It’s been years since Steve’s felt so relaxed. 

By some perspectives, it’s been decades. 

It’s a strange thing, feeling that way as he gets closer to a mission that’s looking so serious. But the same part of him that’s learned never to expect an _after_ has also taught him to enjoy the good days when they do come. 

They have two good days together. 

The rest of the first day? They spend most of it in bed. It’s new to him, but it’s easy to be himself around Buffy, and she hadn’t seemed to mind when certain things took a little practice.

On the second day, they plan. He maps out the next bases from JARVIS in his careful pencil sketches. The layouts are all different -- though all three are aboveground -- and he works methodically to ensure he memorizes it. After all, even he can mix things up, despite his photographic memory. 

The suite has started to feel homey, they’ve been in it so long. He should be concerned about the bill Tony’s going to get from the Four Seasons, but he knows better than to bring it up to him. 

Buffy plans with him, talks strategy, offers her opinion of what to expect from HYDRA and its defenses. It’s obvious that she’s been the one responsible for this sort of planning many times, although she insists that the bases with their maps remind her more of something called The Legend of Zelda than of slaying. 

Still, it’s nice to have the help, while he has it. 

In between helping him and stealing more of his moments, she looks into her next steps. She calls Dawn that second night, letting her know the mission’s done, as she sits with her knees pulled tight on the uncomfortable sofa. 

Steve tries to give her privacy by going into the other room, but she dismisses it with a wave of her hand and says, “It’s fine, do your thing,” before focusing on her call, something about a new master vampire in Rome.

“ _Tell_ me he isn’t claiming to be Order of Aurelius.” She scoffs, then lets out a sigh. 

(He can hear the other end of the conversation. He tries to tune it out, but he can’t help it.)

_“He said William the Bloody sired him. William the Bloody. His words.”_

“Sure, I believe it. But Spike turning someone does _not_ a burgeoning master vampire make. He’s probably a Sunnydale lackey from the nineties.”

_“Yeah, well, the girls are all freaked out about it.”_

“Lucky for them, I wrote the book on slaying the Order of Aurelius.” 

_“You also wrote the book on fu--”_

“Dawn!” 

_“--ing the Order of Aurelius. What, is Steve nearby?”_

“Have I mentioned that I hate you?”

_“I don’t care. Is he coming with you to Rome?”_

“No, he has Avenger stuff to do. That reminds me -- there’s a scepter thing the girls need to watch out for. Big-time avoid, report if seen. I’m gonna text a picture. Can you get the word out?” 

_“Yes. Fine. But why are you going back to Rome? Go do cool things with your hot new boyfriend and the God of Thunder or whatever.”_

“Dawnie, you know I can’t. You were just talking about the girls needing my help with the wannabe Big Bad.”

_“I’ll just call Kennedy. She loves Italy.”_

“I’m _going_ back to Rome. It’s fine. Steve and I are going to keep in touch.”

_“Ha, ‘keep in touch.’ So you’re going to keep seeing him. I so called it.”_

“I have to go now.”

_“Wait, but -- there’s stuff I need to know!”_

“Bye, Dawn!”

_“I’m texting you a couple of very specific questions. The weird one is Xander’s.”_

“Hanging up!” Buffy hits the ‘end’ button on her phone with what appears to be a little extra force. She looks at Steve where he’s sitting at the table with his newspaper maps. 

“Before you say anything,” she says, “I’m not answering whatever their weird questions are.”

And that’s how she makes the plan to go back to Rome instead of London. 

As far as Steve sees it, Rome is closer to Austria than London, anyway. He imagines there could be time in between to regroup. He’ll take the ribbing from Tony if it means he can use the quinjet -- then he can get there in just over an hour.

The next morning, when it’s time for her to go, it still doesn’t quite feel sad to him. He’s thinking of the letters he can write, the cityscapes he can draw. He’s already memorized her phone number and before they leave the hotel, he double checks that he’s correctly copied her London and Rome addresses. 

Then, he walks her to the train, her backpack slung over one arm, and her hand in his. When he kisses her goodbye at Gare du Nord, she pulls him in just tightly enough that he starts to get distracted, then grins when she pulls away. 

“Kick some bad guy ass,” she says.

“You too,” he replies. 

She kisses him once more for good measure, then grabs the bag from him and hops onto the train. He waits for it to leave, and on his way back buys a pencil and pad from a gift shop. A sketch of the hotel might be a nice place to start. 

His phone buzzes with a text from Buffy: 

_I’m resolving to be a better phone keeper. Planning to steal a lot of your moments with this thing._

He smiles, sliding it back into his pocket. He’s running late. By the time he gets back to the hotel, Natasha’s already there, sitting at his table and eating an apple, casual as can be. The tablet is on, the video chat app on the screen.

She doesn’t look surprised that he’s alone, and she gives his arm a gentle squeeze as he passes.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Ready,” he says.


	18. Epilogue

“No dice in Kreischberg?” Buffy asks. 

She stands on her tiptoes to kiss him, cutting off his answer. She wants to know how his mission went -- really -- but more than that, it’s been two weeks since she’s seen him and she wants to keep kissing him. Wants to push him into the wall, fingers digging into his biceps. He lets her, tall frame leaning over her, arms at his sides where she holds them. 

In Rome, the buildings are older. The walls aren’t the brittle drywall she used to throw a demon through every other week back in Sunnydale. Here, she can vault up, expecting but still enjoying when he catches her easily, turns her around, and presses her to the wall a little rougher than a regular human would.

When she breaks away from their kiss, it’s to pull her tank top off, and she’s thinking about his t-shirt and whether she should try to take it off him from this angle or wait for him to get the hint. When he speaks, she’s almost forgotten what she’d asked him. 

“It’s a ski resort,” Steve says. “Other than the HYDRA base, I mean. I think you would’ve liked it. For a visit.”

“It’s August.”

“Hiking. Views from the cable cars.”

“Okay. Count me in. But no Strucker?”

“No. And the base was cleared of its inventory.”

“They knew you were coming.”

“Apparently.”

“Do they know why?”

“Not yet. At least according to what Tony can find.”

“That’s something.” 

“It is. And one less HYDRA base is still a victory in my book.”

“True.” She trails a couple of wayward kisses down his neck and then breaks away. “Still, I know I’ll rest easier when the mind control scepter of doom isn’t out there anymore.”

Steve frowns, quiet for a beat, and she puts a hand on his cheek.

“Hey,” she says, catching his eyes. “You’re gonna find it.”

His expression softens, then turns a little steely, determination setting back in. 

Maybe she can put that determination to good use. She unclasps her bra.

\---

He’s gone the next morning.

\--

Three weeks after that, and he’s in her bed again. 

The nice thing about her apartment in Rome is that it has a queen bed, not a full. Both her apartments came furnished, and she hasn’t done much to change them around, living the bounce-around-slayer-life that she does. 

With Steve in her bed, she’s a snug bug even in the queen. After all, he’s a ‘big fellow,’ as he’d put it. It’s nice, in a cozy kind of way. 

The Four Seasons it is not.

“How are the girls?” Steve asks. 

She sighs, burrowing herself a little deeper into his side and looking up at the ceiling.

“Surviving. Gabriel turned a lot of vamps before we caught wind of his ‘watch out, slayers, Order of Aurelius’ crap. Built himself a nice little army, like he wasn’t a minion himself twenty years ago. They’re holed up in an abandoned warehouse, but it’s too close to some majorly flammable industrial sites to torch it, and the girls aren’t ready for a nest this size.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Right now? It’s been stake out and _stake_ out just before dawn each morning. But it’s slow going. They have the numbers so we have to be careful not to open the girls up to ambush. And everytime we take our eyes off him, he turns another dinner.”

Steve goes quiet, fingers running gently through her hair, but it’s not enough to calm the buzz of annoyance that’s set in. Thinking about Gabriel gets under her skin. She wants to be rash and take them all on herself. She knows she could do it, but she has to think about the example she sets. Has to teach the girls strategy and patience and calculation. But every day they wait, Gabriel and his gang get another chance to slip by them and kill again -- and multiply. Better to just get it _done_ and worry about saving lives first, teaching strategy second.

“Should we take them out ourselves?” Steve asks. “I’m here till tomorrow.”

See, this is why she likes him so much. 

She lifts her head to look at him. “Steve, it’s like thirty vamps.”

He shrugs. “We can handle it.”

She presses her lips together, thinking. Surely, jumping in, (metaphorical) guns a-blazing with Captain America wouldn’t set a bad example the same way going in by herself would.

“When?”

“During the day, I’d think,” Steve says, craning his neck to look at the clock. It’s 7:30pm. An hour left of daylight, maybe. 

“Tomorrow morning?” 

“As long as we’re done by noon. I need to be back in Belgrade by fourteen hundred.”

“You give me a tour of the quinjet before you leave this time and you’ve got yourself a deal, mister.”

This is gonna be fun. 

\---

She likes fighting with him like this. In a warehouse where there’s no need to worry about property damage and with baddies who aren’t human. Neither of them have to hold back. 

Most of the vamps are fledglings. A minion made by a minion. Easy to dispatch, except in their raw numbers. It’s daylight out, and she blocked the entrance to the sewers on their way in, so there’s nowhere for them to go. 

Steve is a sight to behold, strong and quick. Even as she’s distracted by her own fight, she can’t miss the way he uses his shield, knocking down a row of vamps and then taking them out one by one. And there’s no hesitation now in the flash of the stake at the right second. 

In the melee, she doesn’t see Gabriel. But the battle is quick work, and it’s not long before she finds him. He had been hiding behind his horde, but when they’re dust, he stands tall. His slicked back hair and black jeans are a poor man’s imitation of Spike.

His face changes as he walks towards her, eyes glowing yellow. She signals to Steve to wait and watches Gabriel approach. 

“Slayer,” he growls. “You die today. I’m going to do what my sire couldn’t.”

“Your sire,” Buffy says, rolling her eyes. “First of all, ask around: he hasn’t wanted me dead in a long time. Second, he’s not your ‘sire.’ Don’t you realize? He may have made you, but there’s a difference between a _childe_ and a minion.”

Gabriel’s eyes narrow, but he stops walking closer, stalling his approach so he can listen.

“Spike was the one who explained it to me. It’s something in the blood -- the way a vamp is turned. A childe is a companion. A protegee. Family.” She twirls the stake in her hand. “A minion is a servant. Made to be used and discarded.” 

He growls, jumping towards her, and she blocks one, two, three blows. He’s stronger than the others, but not as strong as she is, nowhere near. Not to mention, it was a supremely bad idea on his part to fight them two on one. If Gabriel hadn’t known who Steve was at first sight, he must see how deadly he is now. 

Her eyes flash to Steve and he seems to read her mind, pushing out a burst of speed until he’s behind Gabriel, pulling him into a headlock. Gabriel struggles, but Steve’s grip is too strong.

“Gabriel?” His eyes flash to her, filled with fear and rage. “I just want you to know: I asked. I checked. Spike has never made a _childe_.”

She sinks the stake home and Gabriel explodes into dust. 

Buffy pockets the stake, dusting off her hands and her jeans and surveying the warehouse. It’s quiet, now. The indirect light filters in between the boards on the windows, casting long shadows and illuminating the dust in the air. She pulls out her phone and squints at the bright screen. 

“Ten o’clock.” She scrunches up her nose. “Shower, then breakfast?”

“Pick something up on the way back?” Steve asks. 

“Maritozzo maybe?” she suggests. “I know a place.” 

He nods, so she turns, and he follows.

\---

The quinjet isn’t at Leonardo da Vinci International Airport -- she’d have a hard time picturing it next to all the commercial airliners and inbound tourists -- it’s at a military airport just outside the city. 

It’s small, but sleek. She’s never seen anything quite like it, not that she can tell the difference between the array of buttons and screens on this dash versus a regular airplane. 

“You can really fly this?” She wants to touch, but holds back.

“It’s not as different from the ones back in the war as you’d think,” he says, modest smile on his face. “I could give you a flying lesson sometime.”

“Ha. Do you know the real reason I live in Rome and London? Not the weather. Not the slaying.” She waits for his curious eyes on her. “Mass transit. I don’t even like to _drive_.”

“We could change that.”

“Right now? It’s 12:05.”

“Next time, then,” he says, voice low. “See you soon?”

She nods and he drops a kiss on her lips. 

\---

‘Next time’ turns out to be longer than Steve had hoped. 

After they shut down the HYDRA base in Belgrade, they stay put, and things start to heat up. They call in Bruce, and when he shows up at their hotel, Steve can see his calm disappointment and resignation at being back in the fray. Clint, on the other hand, just shows up one day unannounced with a nod at the group and helps himself to some leftovers in the fridge.

Tony gets Eric Selvig to put out some sort of space signal for Thor, who arrives the next day, only all the way in New York. Grumbling about ancient alien gods needing GPS, Tony flies the quinjet back to get him, then gripes for a week about the imprint Thor left on the balcony at Avengers tower. 

“ _Could_ he have flown across the Atlantic?” Buffy asks, voice in his ear. As much as he enjoys looking at her, Steve likes the old fashioned phone calls too. They’re peaceful. Nothing but her soft voice on the other end of the line.

“Physically? Probably. But trying to tell him how to fly from New York to Belgrade was a little too complicated.”

“Right. I guess it’s kind of tough to explain -- like, ‘take a right at Hungary and if you hit Greece you’ve gone too far.’” 

He chuckles.

“Be careful tomorrow,” Buffy says. 

“I always am.”

\---

He only has time for a text, after. 

_Strucker arrested. We have the scepter. Going to NYC. Talk soon._

After, there’s Ultron. Then Johannesburg. Then Sokovia. It’s moving so quickly he doesn’t know how to sum it up to her, doesn’t have time to focus on anything except _stopping Ultron_ , but --

He’d promised, the next time, she’d know what was coming. For her girls. 

So on the quinjet he writes to her: _Get your people out of Sokovia as soon as possible._

There’s still time. She can get them out. Willow can use magic, maybe, or they can run.

His phone buzzes, and he ignores it. 

She calls again. 

He turns it off. 

\---

He’s at her door a week later. 

Wanda’s safe with Natasha. Tony and Bruce are back in New York, running a slew of tests on Vision (half of which he’d requested himself). There’s talk of moving upstate, of expanding the team, even as Clint tenders his resignation and Thor heads offworld. 

He knocks, and when she opens the door she doesn’t look surprised to see him. 

“You should have a hat,” she says. 

“What?” He doesn’t know what he was expecting her to say, but it wasn’t that. 

“The look you’re giving me right now really calls for a hat in hand.” 

“Oh.” Now he gets it. “Can I come in?” 

She cracks a smile and opens the door. 

\---

“We could’ve helped,” she says. 

They’re on the couch, his head resting on her shoulder. He hasn’t slept much since the battle ended. 

“We didn’t need more firepower.”

He doesn’t say that he wants to keep her safe, because he knows she’s saved the world a dozen times over, that she puts her life in danger in every possible way. She doesn’t need to be coddled. 

“Will you call, when you do?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. 

She runs her fingers through his hair and they’re quiet for a while. 

\---

It’s her turn, next time.

She doesn’t call when she hears the prophecy foretelling ’the light of the one causing the death of a generation.’ Instead, she sends a text: _Something funky going on in London. Can’t fly out to New York right now._

She doesn’t call him the first time she sees the new demon on her patrol. Or the second time she meets him, when he whispers words that shimmer in his black eyes and pull something glowing from the center of her chest.

She doesn’t call when she figures out what he did: It’s a homing beacon on her power. _She’s_ the source, after all. Now he can find the rest of them. 

The next night, five girls go missing.

By a week later, it’s ten more. 

She’s too deep in the pain of it, the responsibility. They were _hers_. Then it’s late nights with Willow and Dawn, figuring out how to steal _back_ what he’d taken from her before he can --

He’s stronger every time he takes another girl.

He’s readying himself to open the doors between worlds, why do they always want to do that, and --

While she fights him (he’s so strong now, now that he’s stolen so much), Willow finds a way to take the power back, to release it in one blast. 

They win. The girls he’d taken are alive, but their powers are gone for good.

It could have been worse.

She doesn’t call until she knows that it’s over, that they’re safe. So much for being a better phone keeper.

\---

“You should’ve told me,” he says. They’re on a video chat, and he’s displeased to note the smattering of dark bruises across her cheeks, forehead, and neck. He’s never seen her injured before.

“Why does that sound familiar,” she responds with a quirk of her eyebrow. 

When he doesn’t reply, she continues. 

“It was mystical. There’s nothing you could’ve done, and we were so in the thick of it, there wasn’t any time--”

“I know,” he says. She’s right. But he understands now, what it must have been like when he was off fighting Ultron. Knowing she had _something_ going on he couldn’t help with, no calls, no texts -- it was harder than he’d expected.

“Steve, I think -- if we’re going to do this, we have to accept that sometimes one of us is going to go offline for a few days to stop the world from ending.” She gives him an ironic smile. “Y’know. Normal relationship stuff.”

A pause.

“It’s not easy for me either,” she says, filling in the quiet.

“No,” he says. “You’re right.”

“I am?”

“I have an idea.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“When this happens, we get together. In person. As soon as it’s safe. Not a week or two later.” 

“I can work with that,” she says.

“I’ll be there in the morning, then?”

“Yeah, okay.” She smiles. 

“Get some rest, Buffy.”

“I’d say ‘you too’ but I think we both know that’s not happening. See you tomorrow.”

Once, he thought he’d never be comfortable over the ocean again, but somehow he’s gotten used to flying across the Atlantic. 

—

When she opens the door, he looks her over, relieved to see that the bruises around her jawline have already faded. 

Still, he must’ve paused a second too long, because her expression changes to one of nervousness, his name starting to form on her lips. 

He interrupts her. 

Steve cups her jaw tenderly and leans down for a kiss. She sighs into it, standing on her tiptoes and looping her arms around his neck. He pulls her closer gently, worried she’s got more injuries he hasn’t seen yet. 

If the fight never ends, then they’re on borrowed time. 

He knows it, and he knows he can’t change it. 

One day, they’ll lose too much, or lose altogether. One day, he won’t be able to fly to her the next morning. 

As she breaks away and pulls him inside by his sleeve with a grin, he thinks: _Today will have to be enough_. 


End file.
